Overview

Music Reports provides Strategic Consulting services that encompass all aspects of rights acquisition and administration. Music Reports provides clients with comprehensive analyses of their business activities and the rights implicated by those activities. The company designs licensing and royalty accounting strategies for clients designed to facilitate and streamline copyright activities and mitigate infringement risk at the lowest possible cost.

Overview

Music Reports provides the most comprehensive music copyright research services available in the marketplace. Over the past 20 years MRI has compiled the world´s largest independent database of music copyright and related business information. Songdex® contains detailed information about millions of songs and recordings and is used in a wide variety of business applications. In addition, the company has developed complex algorithms to match, conform and normalize data from disparate sources. Songdex®, combined with Music Reports´ technical infrastructure, enables licensing and royalty processing at a scale never before seen in the entertainment industry. To complement, support and develop Songdex®, the company maintains a staff of musicologists and copyright researchers to ensure that Music Reports provides clients with the most accurate and up to date copyright information available. Music Reports is continually engaged in complex short term and ongoing research projects on behalf of clients to determine content ownership, analyze content market share and provide quantitative data in licensing negotiations.

Overview

Music Reports provides complete content licensing and administration services for clients in all areas of media. Commonly, ownership rights are fragmented by media and territory, and rights licensing is a function of the nature of the activities clients are engaged in and the territories in which they operate. Music Reports was founded and is managed by copyright attorneys who are experts in music copyright law and business practices. The company´s legal expertise in these areas is unmatched anywhere in the entertainment industry. Therefore, the company is uniquely positioned to provide content licensing and administration services in all areas of media and content distribution.

Music Reports is a leader in performing rights licensing and has pioneered the administration of ASCAP and BMI per program licenses for local television stations. The company is a leader in reproduction rights licensing and is the only company to develop and patent an automated system for invoking the statutory license for reproductions in the United States. The company is also the leading provider of synchronization, master use and mechanical licensing services to music users across the media spectrum.

Overview

Music Reports has developed comprehensive and scalable systems to enable large scale Royalty Accounting and fee settlement activities for its clients. Commonly, clients have a complicated mix of license agreements covering various activities with multiple rates and terms. Music Reports is adept at reconciling the complexities of various license agreements and coding the terms of such agreements in its systems to facilitate reporting and payment activities. Music Reports is SAS 70 compliant and is audited by a leading financial accounting firm on an annual basis.

For the administration of the statutory license, Music Reports has developed dedicated web pages for thousands for music publishing administrators where they can review and download royalty accounting statements, retrieve information related to client content distribution activities and modify or append ownership share information for any of their copyrights.

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Strategic Consulting

Music Reports provides Strategic Consulting services that encompass all aspects of rights acquisition and administration. Music Reports provides clients with comprehensive analyses of their business activities and the rights implicated by those activities. The company designs licensing and royalty accounting strategies for clients designed to facilitate and streamline copyright activities and mitigate infringement risk at the lowest possible cost.

Case Studies

Sprint. Music Reports is uniquely positioned to support the Copyright Research requirements of Mobile Device Manufacturers, Carriers and Content Aggregators. Clients rely on Music Reports for sophisticated research processes and opportunities for cost streamlining pursuant to a catalog matching and evaluation. Sprint is America´s third largest wireless network. Sprint employs Music Reports to provide ongoing copyright research for its entire catalog of ringtones and ringbacks. Research status is updated regularly through a customized integration process with Sprint´s third party platform provider, developed by Music Reports. Through this, Sprint is able to continually monitor available copyright clearances. Music Reports also researches copyrights for exclusive Sprint campaigns.

Record Label. A label client retained Music Reports to research publisher information on sales where the client only had fundamental recording level metadata - artist name and song title. Through systemic automated matching, followed up by manual research, Music Reports was able to tie the recording information to the affiliated publishers and administrators. Music Reports determined the representative publishing splits of each recording and provided contact data for each rightsholder. Sales information was reconciled against the recordings, which resulted in the determination of a payment amount due to the rightsholder, resolving the issue for the label client.

Case Studies

KTVK-TV. KTVK-TV, a terrestrial television broadcaster in Phoenix, became involved with Music Reports 6 years prior to becoming a client. Music Reports recognized that the station´s program lineup made it an ideal candidate for the ASCAP and BMI per program license. Music Reports performed an initial test to analyze KTVK-TV´s incidental music and confirm the cost benefits of Per Program licensing. The test results proved favorable, however, KTVK-TV expressed concern that a Per Program license would be administratively burdensome, so they continued to operate under their existing blanket license.

After numerous subsequent discussions, Music Reports mapped out a comprehensive plan that would transfer the administrative burden to Music Reports. Music Reports recognized that by electing the ASCAP per program license while remaining on the BMI blanket license, the station could reduce costs. By providing the station access online access to the Songdex® database, programmers could search for songs that would be covered under their BMI blanket license, thus avoiding ASCAP per program fees. KTVK-TV is now a Music Reports Per Program client.

Case Studies

Slacker. Slacker is a Digital Media Service client with a variety of publishing deal structures in place. Slacker has numerous voluntarily negotiated publishing agreements, individual song licenses and compulsory catalog licenses. Slacker relies on Music Reports to accurately code the agreement terms and tie the terms to its usage data. Slacker´s usage data and attributable revenue is parsed according to the agreements or a compulsory rate and the amounts due are paid to the payees. Music Reports then reports to and pays over 12,000 music publishing administrators through a dedicated portal and account interface, on a monthly and/or quarterly basis on behalf of Slacker, as well as its other Digital Media Services clients. Payments are aggregated across clients, and separated by payee. Publishers may retrieve monthly information updates and reconcile reporting form the inception of a specific service. Publishers may also use the account interface to adjust ownership share information for any of their copyrights. Like Slacker, Music Reports´ Digital Media Service clients benefits by outsourcing an administratively burdensome component of their business, allowing them to focus on their core competencies.

Funmobility. Funmobility, a mobile content aggregator, required publishing licenses for a catalog of polyphonic ringtones. Music Reports obtained compulsory licenses for the content, which allowed Funmobility to extend their use in the market and increase their profitability. In addition to licensing the ringtones for the Funmobility, Music Reports accounted to the publishers on behalf of the aggregator.