News
Music Reports News Release:
MUSIC REPORTS ANNOUNCES MUSIC PUBLISHING LICENSING AND REPORTING PARTNERSHIP WITH RDIO
June 23, 2010
WOODLAND HILLS, CA – Music Reports, Inc. today announced that it is working with Rdio, the new social music service from the founders of Skype and Kazaa, to administer the mechanical licensing and royalty accounting for Rdio’s music subscription service in the United States.
Pursuant to the agreement, Rdio will participate in Music Reports’ licensing and reporting program for digital music services. Under this program, Music Reports pays royalties to, and prepares music usage reports and royalty accounting statements for, more than 20,000 music publishing administrators representing more than 90,000 publisher payees. Then publishers conveniently download the music usage reports and accounting statements from password-protected Music Reports Websites.
“We are excited to be chosen by Rdio to manage their mechanical licensing and royalty accounting obligations”, said Douglas J. Brainin, President and CEO of Music Reports. “We are confident that this exciting new service will rapidly attract subscribers, thereby generating significant royalty income for music publishers.”
About Music Reports
Music Reports, Inc. is the leading provider of music rights administration services in the United States. The company’s proprietary systems and applications set the standard for technology in the music industry. Music Reports also maintains the largest database of music copyright information in the world, the Songdex® database. The company offers a full spectrum of music rights administration services, including: copyright research; music clearance; sales data consolidation; music usage reporting; royalty accounting; and royalty payment. Music Reports clients include the world’s largest television and radio broadcasters, digital music services, background music services, major record labels, mobile carriers and aggregators, and consumer products companies. Music Reports is a portfolio company of ABRY Partners, one of North America’s leading private equity investment firms, which is focused on media and information services. To learn more, please visit www.musicreports.com
About Rdio
Rdio brings music alive with its social music service where you can discover music through friends and tastemakers. Rdio takes the work out of the deciding what to play next and connects the music in your Web browser with your mobile phone. You can play as many songs you want, anytime, anywhere. Rdio was founded by Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström and Atomico, a leading technology investment group. To learn more, please visit www.rdio.com
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BuyWidget News Release:
BUYWIDGET EMBEDDABLE MUSIC DOWNLOAD WIDGET LAUNCHES
Service allows any site or blog to instantly and easily sell digital music
MIAMI, FL (May 26, 2010) – BuyWidget, the distributed commerce service, announced today that it has launched its new embeddable music download widget. With the launch of BuyWidget, any site or blog can instantly and easily build a custom playlist, embed a widget, and sell track or album music downloads to their visitors.
BuyWidget allows site owners to enhance their user experience and derive added revenue. BuyWidget eliminates the need for any site to integrate a proprietary cart or e-commerce solution, and unlike standard affiliate sales models, the entire transaction takes place on the actual site where the widget is located, avoiding the redirection of visitors to a third party or competitive site.
With just a few quick steps, bloggers or site owners can search from more than 8 million high quality MP3s (encoded at 296 kbps or higher), build their personalized playlist, add their own logo to their BuyWidget, name the playlist and embed the BuyWidget code. BuyWidget supports standard HTML, WordPress, TypePad or Blogger sites. Site publishers can update the BuyWidget tracks and albums or the sequence as often as they like. To fulfill the BuyWidget downloads, BuyWidget has partnered with MediaNet, the leading provider of premium digital media content. BuyWidget does not require a monthly sales minimum, setup charge or initiation fee.
BuyWidget allows a site publisher to embed playlists to accompany music-related editorial stories, music reviews, and artist profiles. Widgets can be built using either pre-programmed or personalized thematic or topic-specific playlists to provide appropriately suggested tracks for events and special occasions – with all songs or albums quickly purchasable from the associated BuyWidget.
“With BuyWidget, website owners, blog owners and publishers can build a truly immersive experience – where music transactions are closely tied to their site’s editorial content,” said John Jones, CEO of BuyWidget. “It’s a great opportunity for sites of all traffic levels to derive incremental income from the sale of music downloads, built around a personalized playlist of meaningful music choices and recommendations, and for artists and labels to virally expand their points of sales distribution beyond dedicated online music commerce sites.”
About BuyWidget
BuyWidget (www.buywidget.com) is a distributed commerce application and service provider. Sites, portals and blogs use BuyWidget to enhance their user experience and derive added revenue from their traffic. BuyWidget is a division of fortyninegroup, LLC. For more information, go to www.buywidget.com or www.fortyninegroup.com
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MediaNet News Release:
MEDIANET LAUNCHES EBOOK CATALOG AND DISTRIBUTION SERVICE
Success in Digital Music Distribution is Expanded to Deliver Comprehensive eBooks Digital Bookstore and Full-Featured Product Offering
NEW YORK, NEW YORK (April 28, 2010) – MediaNet, the leading service provider for the distribution of premium digital media, introduced today a comprehensive eBook catalog and product offering. The advanced MN Open platform that MediaNet has successfully built for digital music will now support the integration of eBooks using an intuitive API that has been widely adopted by more than 100 application developers, web publishers and online retailers for music offerings.
MediaNet will make available a broad catalog of eBooks including the most popular titles that are available through major physical and online book sellers. These eBooks will initially be offered in the Adobe ePub and PDF formats which are compatible with a wide variety of devices including PC, Mac, Sony Reader, Nook and new entrants such as the Plastic Logic Que, and additional formats will be introduced as needed. Currently there are applications available in the marketplace that will allow for compatibility with the “iDevices” including the iPhone and iPad, similar to the applications available for digital music.
Alan McGlade, CEO of MediaNet stated: “MediaNet has a long track record in the music business with proven success in the digital delivery of premium music content. MediaNet currently powers music metadata, streams and downloads for over one hundred digital retailers and online entertainment destinations. The integration of eBooks comes at the right time for this burgeoning industry and is a natural extension of MediaNet’s digital music roots.”
MediaNet’s eBook service will be accessed by web publishers and application developers through an API built on top of MediaNet’s enterprise class content delivery platform. MediaNet’s API provides complete control over the user experience, functionality, e-commerce and content catalog. Online retailers can rapidly implement more advanced browsing, discovery, and purchase options under their own brand. MediaNet will make available its popular suite of Web Components for the eBooks offering in the next month. With no coding required and a quick time to market, MediaNet’s Web Components allow anyone to place dynamically displayed eBook content anywhere on the Web. This offers a contextually rich experience with eBooks content presented to end users in a relevant manner when they are most interested in an author or subject and likely to transact.
New MediaNet customers can sign-up for the MN Open eBook service by going to www.mndigital.com <http://www.mndigital.com/> . They will be able to incorporate a versatile and intelligent download manager to simplify the acquisition and management of eBooks for their end users. Once an eBook service is successfully launched, MediaNet customers will be given access to a sophisticated real-time reporting portal to monitor sales activity.
Alan McGlade added: “The MN Open eBook solution gives web publishers and application developers access to a new form of premium digital content that will increase user engagement and generate sales. Book publishers will see a significant broadening of eBook distribution online with a powerful new marketing platform for titles to be exposed to consumers when they are most likely to purchase them. In addition, MediaNet’s entry in the growing eBooks marketplace will spur innovation by lowering the barrier to entry for a broad range of online retailers and encouraging new ways to present eBooks and touch consumers.”
Music Reports News Release:
MUSIC REPORTS AND AUDIBLE MAGIC ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
Companies to Expand Licensing and Reporting Solutions for Digital Music
April 22, 2010
WOODLAND HILLS, CA. and LOS GATOS, CA – Music Reports, the leading independent provider of music rights administration services in the U.S., and Audible Magic, the leading provider of electronic media identification and copyright tracking services in the U.S., today announced the formation of a strategic partnership to expand music publishing licensing and reporting solutions for broadcasters, Internet websites, and other digital music users.
Pursuant to this partnership, the two companies have matched the Audible Magic database of sound recording “fingerprints” to the songs registered in Music Reports’ Songdex® database, and the companies will continue to match their databases, on an ongoing basis, as they are updated with new fingerprints and songs. The companies intend to jointly develop processes whereby data related to the matched databases may be transmitted electronically to music users, for purposes of music licensing and royalty reporting.
These activities will enable the companies to perform music publisher and performing rights society market share analysis for music users, as well as facilitate efficient licensing and more transparent reporting to rights owners and collecting societies, to the economic benefit of both rights owners and music users.
“For too long, digital music users have had no way of knowing which songs are controlled by which music publishers and by which collecting societies”, said Les Watkins, SVP of Business Affairs and Business Development for Music Reports. “This has created an inefficient marketplace for music rights, so that users have been limited in their licensing options. Through this partnership with Audible Magic, we will open up lucrative direct licensing opportunities for music publishers, while reducing transaction costs and overall royalty payments for social media websites and other music users.”
“Music Reports provides licensing and reporting services to many of the leading US broadcasters and websites. With this new relationship, we’re able to provide a more integrated set of services to support the new business models for licensing content that meets the needs of the rights owners, the collecting societies, the distributors and consumers of music” said Vance Ikezoye, CEO of Audible Magic. “Our aim is to increase the legitimate uses of music and ensure artists and songwriters are properly compensated.”
About Music Reports
Music Reports, Inc. (www.musicreports.com) is the leading provider of music rights administration services in the United States. The company’s proprietary systems and applications set the standard for technology in the music industry. Music Reports also maintains the largest database of music copyright information in the world, the Songdex® database. The company offers a full spectrum of music rights administration services, including: copyright research; music clearance; sales data consolidation; music usage reporting; royalty accounting; and royalty payment. Music Reports clients include the world’s largest television and radio broadcasters, digital music services, background music services, major record labels, mobile carriers and aggregators, and consumer products companies. Music Reports is a portfolio company of ABRY Partners, one of North America’s leading private equity investment firms, which is focused on media and information services. For more information, go to www.musicreports.com
About Audible Magic®
Headquartered in Los Gatos, California, Audible Magic (www.audiblemagic.com) is the leading provider of content management and anti-piracy services. Its patented content identification technologies and extensive reference database enable Web 2.0 websites, CD/DVD replicators, P2P networking companies, ISPs, colleges and universities to monitor, track, manage, filter and monetize multi-media digital content as needed. For more information, go to www.audiblemagic.com
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MediaNet News Release:
MediaNet Tops 100 New Customers for Digital Delivery Of Premium Content
Milestone Reached Within Six Months of Debuting MN Open API and Web Components
April 15, 2010
New York, NY, April 15, 2010 – MediaNet, the industry leading business-to-business provider of premium digital media content, announced today that more than 100 new customers have signed on to provide digital music content from the advanced MN Open platform. MediaNet debuted a new set of products including the MN Open API and a suite of Web Components for the delivery of premium digital music content six months ago.
Alan McGlade, CEO of MediaNet, commented: “Adding one hundred new customers in six months clearly demonstrates the interest web publishers and application developers have in integrating premium media into their product offerings for consumers. Recently we added a fully automated sign-up path on our web site and as a result, the rate of new customer sign-ups has accelerated further.”
For a complete list of MediaNet’s new customers, go to: http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/customers.html. MediaNet’s customers range from global brands to niche web publishers and application developers in various sectors including major news providers, social media platforms, casual video games publishers and direct payment companies.
McGlade added: “MediaNet’s rapid success has been based on providing a low barrier to entry and reducing friction so that a website or application of any size and scale can easily provide premium digital content to their users. Our customers can focus on their users while MediaNet handles licensing, reporting and royalty payments, along with content ingestion, management and delivery through the advanced MN Open platform.”
Music Reports News Release:
Music Reports Announces Partnership With TuneWiki
Agreement will enable tracking for song lyrics licensing and reporting on TuneWiki, a leading social music player.
April 7, 2010
WOODLAND HILLS, CA – Music Reports, Inc. and TuneWiki today announced that they have entered into an agreement for Music Reports to administer the U.S. song lyrics licensing and royalty accounting for subtitled song lyrics appearing on the TuneWiki social player for mobile phones.
Pursuant to the agreement, Music Reports will license lyric rights from music publishers on behalf of TuneWiki. Music Reports will then leverage its proprietary Songdex® database to identify the songs contained in the catalogs of the licensing music publishers, as well as report lyric usage and pay royalties to the licensing music publishers.
“Our relationship with TuneWiki enables us to enter the song lyrics rights administration business for the very first time”, said Les Watkins, SVP of Business Affairs and Business Development for Music Reports. “We are excited to work with the TuneWiki team, which has developed a revolutionary new way for consumers to enjoy song lyrics on mobile phones.”
“Given the continuous growth in users and playbacks on the TuneWiki social music player, it is critical we have a first-rate partner like Music Reports to help manage our administration services,” said Larry Goldberg, Chief Operating Officer for TuneWiki. “Our relationship with the music industry is very important to us and Music Reports is the ideal company for reporting royalties given their industry leading expertise.”
About Music Reports
Music Reports, Inc. (www.musicreports.com) is the leading provider of music rights administration services in the United States. The company’s proprietary technology systems and applications set the standard for technology in the music industry. Music Reports also maintains the largest database of music copyright information in the world, the Songdex® datatbase. The company offers a full spectrum of music rights administration services including: copyright research, music clearance, sales data consolidation, music usage reporting, royalty accounting and royalty payment. Music Reports clients include the world’s largest television and radio broadcasters, digital music services, background music services, major record labels, mobile carriers and aggregators, and consumer products companies. Music Reports is a portfolio company of ABRY Partners, one of North America’s leading private equity investment firms, which is focuesed on media and information services. To learn more, please visit www.musicreports.com
About TuneWIki
TuneWiki (www.tunewiki.com) is the internationally award-winning social music player with the largest legally licensed lyrics database in the world. TuneWiki is revolutionizing the mobile music experience by combining subtitled lyrics with music and music videos, lyrics translations into over 40 languages, real-time mapping, geographical charting and social networking. TuneWiki’s proprietary technology combines lyrics with the music you play whether from your locally stored library or a streaming internet source. Founded in 2007, the company has offices in Los Angeles, California and Bellbrook, Ohio. To learn more, please visit www.tunewiki.com
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Music Reports News Release:
Music Reports Announces Music Publishing Licensing and Reporting Agreement with Zune.
February 17, 2010
WOODLAND HILLS, CA. Music Reports Inc. today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Zune for Music Reports to administer the music publishing licensing and royalty accounting for the Zune Pass subscription service in the United States.
Zune will participate in Music Reports’ statutory mechanical licensing and reporting program for digital music services. Under this program, Music Reports distributes royalties on behalf of digital music services to, and prepares music usage reports and royalty accounting statements for, more than 17,000 music publishing administrators representing more than 65,000 individual publishers. Publishers have the option to download electronic music usage reports and accounting statements from password-protected Music Reports websites.
About Music Reports
Music Reports, Inc. (www.musicreports.com) is the leading provider of music rights administration services in the United States. The company’s proprietary systems and applications set the standard for technology in the music industry. Music Reports also maintains the largest database of music copyright information in the world, the Songdex® database. The company offers a full spectrum of music rights administration services, including: copyright research; music clearance; sales data consolidation; music usage reporting; royalty accounting and royalty payment. Music Reports’ clients include the world’s largest television and radio broadcasters, digital music services, background music services, major record labels, mobile carriers and aggregators, and consumer products companies. Music Reports is a portfolio company of ABRY Partners, one of North America’s leading private equity investment firms, which is focused on media and information services.
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Music Reports Release:
Music Reports Announces Distribution of More Than $5 Million in Mechanical Royalties on Behalf of Digital Music Service Clients
September 16, 2009
WOODLAND HILLS, CA. Music Reports Inc. (“MRI”), the leading provider of music rights administration services in the United States, today announced that it has distributed more than $5,000,000 in statutory mechanical royalties on behalf of its digital music service clients. These royalties have been calculated at the rates applicable to on-demand streams and limited downloads, as determined by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board in 2008. Statutory mechanical licenses from MRI now cover more than 1 billion plays of digital music per month.
“Publishers are reaping great financial benefits from our statutory mechanical licensing program for digital music services,” said Douglas J. Brainin, President and CEO of Music Reports. “This program continues to be a critical component of any licensing strategy for digital music services.”
MRI now pays statutory mechanical royalties to more than 12,000 music publishing administrators, representing over 50,000 individual music publishers. MRI clients use the statutory mechanical license to obtain rights from the tens of thousands of independent music publishers who do not license through the Harry Fox Agency.
About Music Reports
Music Reports, Inc. (www.musicreports.com) is the leading provider of music rights administration services in the United States. The company’s proprietary systems and applications set the standard for technology in the music industry. MRI also maintains the largest database of music copyright information in the world, the Songdex® database. The company offers a full spectrum of music rights administration services, including: copyright research; music clearance; sales data consolidation; music usage reporting; royalty accounting; and royalty payment. MRI clients include the world’s largest television and radio broadcasters, digital music services, background music services, record labels, mobile carriers, and consumer products companies. MRI is a portfolio company of ABRY Partners, one of North America’s leading private equity investment firms, which is focused on media and information services.
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| MusicDish | BNET | musicbiz | Kerchoonz | Mi2N | Music Industry Report | Billboard | 24-7 | Industry Plug | Techmania |
MediaNet News Release:
MediaNet Announces Revolutionary New Products to Bring Digital Music to the Masses
25 Customers Already Signed including iLike, MOG, Ultimate Guitar, Intertech Media
New York, NY, September 17, 2009 — MediaNet, the industry leading business-to-business provider of premium music and media delivery to customers of all sizes, announced today two new products, easy to install Web Components and an API through the Company’s advanced enterprise technology platform, MN Open.
Alan McGlade, CEO of MediaNet, stated: “MediaNet is delivering the next generation of music services. We are changing the paradigm by bringing music to the user rather than forcing them to go to a handful of centralized online destinations to acquire downloads. The MN Open Web Components and API offer for the first time, the ability to engage users in the moment to discover and purchase music, while our customers can keep them on their site longer and maximize revenue.”
Customers can now sign up for the MN Open Web Components and API for free at www.mndigital.com and have a digital music offering up and running on their website or application quickly.
With the MN Open API, customers have complete control over the user experience, functionality, e-commerce and a 7 million song catalog with all services delivered under their brand. The API features include:
- Integration into any website or application
- Advanced catalog search capabilities with fuzzy matching
- Access to a portion of or the entire catalog and customized pricing
- Rich metadata for every song, album and artist
- Use of MediaNet’s e-commerce engine or integration with the customer’s existing e-commerce
- Compatibility with any programming language
MediaNet’s suite of Web Components is easy to install and incorporate into a website with no coding required. Customers copy and paste the code snippets anywhere on their page with their branding front and center. Web Components include:
- Media Matcher: Automatically matches MediaNet’s catalog against existing web content
- Media Links: Hyperlinks references to artists, albums and songs within existing content on page
- Relevant Media Search: Integrates into site’s existing search and returns media results alongside regular search
- Media Explorer: Dynamically displays music-related information with purchasable media
- Media Charts: Charts top selling content to entice music discovery, sampling and purchases
- Media Purchase: Fulfills purchases through an automatically configured and setup component which appears in its dedicated, secure window
Since introducing these products in the last eight weeks, MediaNet has signed up over 25 new customers from social media destinations, kiosk provider, and radio stations, to musician sites, music blogs, and news organizations.
Hadi Partovi, President, iLike, commented: “MediaNet’s technology made it easy for iLike to roll out an MP3 store in record time. iLike’s in-page MP3 purchase functionality helps keep iLike’s user base on the site, engaged in the discovery and sampling of music, while making the purchasing process easy.”
David Hyman, founder and CEO, MOG, added: “MediaNet has all of the right components we need to launch a streaming music service. A comprehensive catalog, superior back-end technology and the right pricing made it easy for MOG to select MediaNet as our music service provider. The integration process has been excellent and we are very excited about delivering new features for music lovers to interact and engage with MOG.”
Frank Murray, President of Intertech Media remarked: “With more than 1,000 radio station websites under management, Intertech Media is constantly looking for new ways to add value and revenue for our clients. MediaNet’s API and Web Components allow us to advance our mission of providing tools to keep listeners engaged online for longer periods of time with music content that is exciting and relevant. With MediaNet’s advanced platform, we have solved the problem for our clients to stop sending their users outbound to third party sites for music purchasing while creating a more seamless and integrated listening environment.”
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MediaNet’s world-class technology platform, MN Open, offers an API and easy to use Web Components that deliver a set of powerful music and media content products including streams, downloads, music search, contextual matching and other media discovery tools to engage end users while keeping them on your website or application longer to maximize revenues. MediaNet powers music and media delivery for brands of all sizes including iLike, Zune, HMV, Tesco, MOG, Ultimate Guitar, Intertech Media and many more.
MediaNet is privately-held and is headquartered in New York with offices in Seattle.
Music Reports Press Release:
Music Reports Announces Launch of Industry’s First Online Accounting for Digital Music Use
May 20, 2009
WOODLAND HILLS – Music Reports Inc., the leading provider of music rights administration services, today announced that it will commence accounting to more than 12,000 music publishers representing over 50,000 individual copyright owners on behalf of its digital distribution clients. This is the first accounting under an industry-wide agreement between music publishers, record labels and digital distributors in conjunction with the 2008 royalty rate set by the Copyright Royalty Board. Usage reporting and accounting will be available online for the first time in music publishing history.
This month, more than 12,000 music publishers may log in to password-protected websites at www.musicreports.com to view accountings, download monthly usage reports, and update song ownership information. Unequaled in digital copyright expertise, Music Reports has issued more than 5 million Notices Of Intent (NOIs), and negotiated thousands of licenses on behalf of its digital distribution clients in anticipation of the establishment of a royalty rate determined by the Copyright Royalty Board. To manage the accounting and fee settlement process, Music Reports will leverage the power of Songdex®, its independent database of music publishing copyright information. The company uses Songdex® to process over a billion digital transactions per month.
“Our strategies have focused on speed to market for content distributors, robust systems and services, and transparency for music publishers. With the launch of our new web-enabled royalty accounting application, we have created a world class data resource for both content distributors and copyright owners.”, said Douglas J. Brainin, President and CEO of Music Reports, Inc.
About Music Reports
Music Reports, Inc. (MRI), located in Woodland Hills, CA, is a leading provider of music rights administration services. With cutting-edge technology, proprietary systems and applications, and Songdex®, the world’s only independent database of music publishing copyright information, Music Reports is the most innovative and accomplished rights organization in media.
Music Reports offers a full spectrum of licensing services including copyright research, license fee negotiations, sales data consolidation, music use reporting, royalty accounting and fee settlement. Music Reports’ clients are among the world’s most recognized broadcasters, cable companies, record labels, digital media services, wireless carriers, and consumer products companies.
Music Reports is a portfolio company of ABRY partners, one of North America’s leading, media-focused private equity investment firms.
