BMG has got itself into the neighbouring rights game. That's the performing rights associated with sound recordings, by the way. That being the music industry's preferred definition of 'neighbouring rights' these days.
So that's basically the money that comes in when recorded music is broadcast or played publicly, such as in a bar or club. This growing revenue stream is administered by the collective licensing system, coming in via each country's record industry collecting society.
That means artists and labels can access their share of that money by simply joining one of those societies. But neighbouring rights agencies argue that they can help their clients more effectively connect to the collective licensing system on a global basis, the hope being that - by doing so - they get more money and it's paid over to them faster.
BMG is already connected to the collecting society network, of course, as a label, in order to access the monies it is due when recordings it released are broadcast or played. Now it's realised that artists might like to use its neighbouring rights framework too.
The service will be overseen by BMG's VP Operations Strategy David Miller, who says: "There are some really great national performing rights agencies, but international performance is highly variable. The best analogy is probably music publishing. Collection societies provide the backbone of collections, but publishers still add significant value".
"Our mission is to maximise the value of each and every copyright, ensuring all our artists benefit from one of the worldwide recording industry's fastest-growing income streams and receive all payments promptly and accurately", he goes on. "Importantly we try to make the deal process swift and easy for potential clients, coming to the table with an offer within five business days from receiving information about the deal".
The first clients of the new division are producer Jonas Blue and Who frontman Roger Daltrey.