Speaking on the How Music Services Are Licensed panel at The Great Escape, McEwen said he is seeing new initiatives springing up all the time which are changing the face of licensing in the digital space.
‘It’s not a static market,’ he said. ‘The deals that we’re doing aren’t just pan-European, they’re for an ever-growing list of territories. And there are new initiatives coming up all the time. There’s almost as much innovation on that side of the business as there is on the digital service provider side.
‘Increasingly people have said that the publishing area of the business is difficult to navigate, and while I do think this is overstated, we certainly do need new solutions and aggregation that’s not on a national basis.’
McEwen went on to explain how the society is working to create a licensing and processing hub to ‘provide a more joined up offering to the market’.
The project, which is subject to competition clearance, aims to create easier access for digital music services to clear music rights, and faster and more precise payments of royalties to rightsholders.
PRS for Music, together with partners STIM and GEMA, plans to begin launching services subject to European Commission clearance.
The hub is set to be the first multi-repertoire hub to provide integrated ‘back office’ data processing services and ‘front office’ digital multi-territory licensing services to authors, publishers, other collective rights management organisations and digital service providers.
The joint venture has been developed in order to reduce licensing and distribution challenges currently inherent in the digital market place.
‘It’s not a static market,’ he said. ‘The deals that we’re doing aren’t just pan-European, they’re for an ever-growing list of territories. And there are new initiatives coming up all the time. There’s almost as much innovation on that side of the business as there is on the digital service provider side.
‘Increasingly people have said that the publishing area of the business is difficult to navigate, and while I do think this is overstated, we certainly do need new solutions and aggregation that’s not on a national basis.’
McEwen went on to explain how the society is working to create a licensing and processing hub to ‘provide a more joined up offering to the market’.
The project, which is subject to competition clearance, aims to create easier access for digital music services to clear music rights, and faster and more precise payments of royalties to rightsholders.
PRS for Music, together with partners STIM and GEMA, plans to begin launching services subject to European Commission clearance.
The hub is set to be the first multi-repertoire hub to provide integrated ‘back office’ data processing services and ‘front office’ digital multi-territory licensing services to authors, publishers, other collective rights management organisations and digital service providers.
The joint venture has been developed in order to reduce licensing and distribution challenges currently inherent in the digital market place.
