BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Open Music Initiative (OMI), an initiative of the Berklee College of Music’s Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE), today announced the addition of 80 new members, including Dubset Media, Napster, Red Bull Media House, The Orchard, Sonos, SoundExchange, Viacom, GMR Marketing, 7 Digital, as well as the performing rights societies SOCAN (Canada) and BUMA (Netherlands). With rapidly expanding representation across all facets of the music industry, the initiative now boasts more than 140 members unified around the issue of creating an open protocol for creative rights management and equitable royalty distribution across the industry.
OMI was announced on June 13 and is spearheaded by a group of leading academic institutions including BerkleeICE, the MIT Media Lab and University College London with broad, industry-wide collaboration. The new constituents join leading players from across the music industry and technology spectrum including Universal Media Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Intel, Spotify, Netflix, SiriusXM, YouTube, SoundCloud, Pandora, Netflix and many others in the multi-stakeholder effort to solve longstanding digital music distribution and rights issues.
"Open Music has a very important goal: to create a uniform way of identifying music rights ownership across the spectrum of the music industry value chain and ensuring owners and creators are compensated appropriately,” said Panos Panay, co-founder of OMI and Founding Managing Director at BerkleeICE. "The participation from across the industry in this effort is unprecedented and as a collective we are making great steps towards creating a shared digital ledger of music rights holders and creators in order to tackle the critical issue of creator and rights holder compensation in the digital era.”
“The Open Music Initiative is driving technical innovation in a way that facilitates the protection of creator rights and intellectual property to keep pace with state of the art music distribution and address the need for fair accounting and compensation,” said Dan Harple, CEO, Context Labs and an OMI co-founder. “We believe distributed ledger technology is the key to achieving this capability, and represents a major step forward in turning the tide on piracy and fraud that costs artists and the music and entertainment industry billions of dollars each year.”
New Members Extend Expansive Industry Participation
The
initiative has garnered resources and expertise from all aspects of the
music industry, and new members include creators, music publishers,
managers, streaming services, technology organizations and many more --
all of whom have a vested interest in increasing transparency within the
industry.
"In the creative industries, content attribution and rights management processes sit right at the core of our operational supply chain. Keeping up with the scale and complexity of the new digital ecosystem has become an increasing challenge for all parties, and the area is crying out for innovative solutions," said Jeff Davidson, Enterprise Architect, Viacom. "The Open Music Initiative is blazing a trail to define a future that will ultimately unlock value across the chain, from creators to consumers."
According to Martin Brem, Head of Music Portfolio at Red Bull Media House, "Overcoming the burden of archaic technologies and business procedures is instrumental for a prospering music economy. We need to keep what works and re-engineer what should be fixable, given the quality of data that can be generated in a digital environment. When, if not now? Red Bull Media House supports OMI’s cross-industry effort as it follows the similar spirit of our own investments for in-house, state-of-the-art technologies to promote flawless music rights management from the creation of music works to near real-time tracking of usage across all of our digital platforms.”
Napster CEO Mike Davis added, “Napster has a deep passion for artists and we’re excited to work with OMI to create a music ecosystem that supports everyone involved. Cross-industry collaboration is exactly what the music industry needs to solve the challenges that come with the new digital music economy.”
Kristen Bender, strategic product partnerships at Sonos, said, “Our mission at Sonos is to fill every home with music, so naturally we are deeply committed to the long-term success of everyone involved in the industry – making sure creators and rightsholders are appropriately compensated is a huge piece of that equation. We're extremely impressed with the way OMI has brought together the entire industry, and look forward to collaborating with fellow members to collectively shape the future of the music industry."
Richard Stumpf, chief executive officer, Atlas Music Publishing, which represents songs performed by top stars including Madonna, Otis Redding, John Legend and Carrie Underwood, added, "The future of the music industry and all of its participants will rely on fair compensation for creators and accurate data across mediums that move billions of songs to ensure proper payments. Atlas aggressively seeks to pursue pathways that ensure fair pay for our creators. OMI is lighting that path in the world of data standards in new media."
A full list of new members that have joined since the June 13 launch include: 7 Digital, Ace Records, AFEM, APS Radio, Audible Magic, AudioSalad, Atlas Music Publishing, Avid, BAM!, Bandsintown, Beatroot, BigchainDB, BMAT, Brick Lane Records, Buma/Stemra, ClearTracks, Copasso, Copyright Forum, Corerights, Dart Music, Digimarc, DistroKId, Doppler Labs, Dubset Media, Entertainment Intelligence, Exploration, Fermata Entertainment Ltd., GeoTrackID, GMR Marketing, Infinite Best, JAAK, Just Hear It, Kendra Initiative, Loudr, Media Net, Moodagent, Music Audience Exchange, Music Pub Works, Musimap, MyWerx, Napster, New York University Music Business, Noteflight, Pexeso Inc., Project Plus, ProTechU, proTunes, Queensland University of Technology, Red Bull Media House, RightsIn, Rightsshare B.V., Round Hill Music, Safe Creative, SESAC, SingFit, Skrapps, So Stereo Music, SOCAN, Sonos, SoundBetter, SoundExchange, Soundstr, Soundvault, Symphonic Distribution, Taihe Music Group, The Orchard, Transparency Rights, TuneSat, UO Mic and Viacom.
The next OMI Technology Meeting will take place on November 22 at University College London in London, UK. To learn more about the initiative or to join, visit the OMI website: http://www.open-music.org.
About Open Music Initiative
Open Music Initiative (OMI) is a
non-profit collective of musicians, entrepreneurs, industry
professionals, academics, technologists and policy experts who love and
value music. Its mission is to promote and advance the development of
open source standards and innovation related to music rights and all
their associated uses. Utilizing today's technologies and open source
mindset, OMI believes the way music rights owners are identified and
compensated can be radically improved for digital era sustainability.
Additional information on OMI is available at http://www.open-music.org.
About BerkleeICE
Berklee’s Institute for Creative
Entrepreneurship (ICE), an initiative within Berklee College of Music,
is designed to inspire, educate and launch the next generation of
creative entrepreneurs. BerkleeICE helps prepare graduates for careers
as entrepreneurs; fosters the creation of new products, services and
businesses in the creative industry; and inspires disruptive ideas
through musical creativity and cross-discipline collaboration. Learn
more about BerkleeICE at
http://berklee.edu and its Open Music Initiative at
http://berklee.edu/ice/omi.
