19 May 2008
Monitoring deal announced between the MCPS-PRS Alliance and Nielsen Music Control
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The MCPS-PRS Alliance, the UK society that collects and pays royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers, has signed a deal with information experts Nielsen Music Control that will double the accuracy of radio royalty payments to its members.
Under this deal, Nielsen’s state of the art monitoring system, based on a unique fingerprinting technology, will initially be applied by the Alliance to 75 UK commercial radio stations where previously a sampling methodology was used to 'predict' overall performance information.
Fingerprinting technology works by matching music being broadcast by a radio station to a digital fingerprint of that music held on a central database creating an accurate match of commercially released recordings being broadcast on radio.
The introduction of the new technology means that over 13 million radio broadcasts per year, from over 350 UK radio stations will be paid on a per-play basis.
In revenue terms, the Alliance will be increasing the amount of royalties paid according to actual broadcast usage to nearly 90%.
The remaining smaller commercial radio stations will continue to be paid by taking samples of the music broadcast throughout the year. |
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In 2007 the Alliance distributed over £500m in royalties and of this £155m was generated from 30 million radio and TV broadcasts of its members’ music.
Steve Porter, Chief Executive of the Alliance said: ‘We are very excited to be partnering with Nielsen Music Control. Their innovative monitoring technology, based on digital fingerprinting, and comprehensive data of 500,000 recordings will enable us to further enhance the accuracy of our royalty distributions.’
Nielsen Music Control monitor music airplay throughout Europe using its proprietary technology and are regarded as the official airplay chart providers delivering services to clients such as record labels, radio stations, rights societies and media outlets.
Eric Weinberg, Managing Director of Nielsen Music Control said: ‘We are thrilled to partner with the Alliance on this transformational initiative. With our advanced technology, deep music library and thorough understanding of the marketplace, this relationship will help the Alliance better serve its members.’
The first planned royalty distribution using the new technology will be December 2008.
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PRESS CONTACT:
Catherine George, the MCPS PRS Alliance – 020 7306 4229 -catherine.george@mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk
Sabine Jones, Nielsen Music Control - 0207 420 9296 - s.jones@nielsenmusiccontrol.com
NOTES TO EDITORS:
Nielsen Music Control – A division of the Nielsen Company, Nielsen Music Control, along with Nielsen BDS, its sister company in North America, is the global leader in performance monitoring. With performance monitoring operations in nearly 25 countries, Nielsen provides a broad range of clients with critical information on music played over the radio, on television and over new media (internet, satellite). Currently Nielsen Music Control monitors 127 radio and 22 TV stations in the UK with plans to expand further.
The MCPS-PRS Alliance - MCPS and PRS work together in an operational alliance, the MCPS-PRS Alliance. Together, they are one of the world’s most efficient combined rights collecting operations. MCPS-PRS has succeeded in its goal to offer its members more money, more often and at less cost, whilst ensuring its customers are provided with the most efficient means by which they can use music.
How does Fingerprinting work?
Every recording of a song can be represented as a unique digital 'fingerprint'. Monitoring equipment located near the source of transmission picks up the songs being broadcast.
The new system requires only a few seconds of a song to be broadcast to capture the fingerprint.
Once the fingerprint is captured it is passed to Nielsen's constantly updated music library. The library currently has over 500,000 tracks registered and new releases are constantly being added.
Once music is identified within Nielsen's library it is then reported to the Alliance and automatically matched to our database. Meaning that the writers and publishers of those songs get paid fairly and accurately.
Pay per play - full returns of all music played.
Wherever possible (i.e. revenue is sufficient), PRS will distribute royalties to all the works performed on a given station.
The Alliance is increasing the number of pay per play distributions. Members now receive payment for every broadcast on over 140 TV and radio stations.
Sample – a subset of returns of all the music played.
In many cases the cost of collecting and processing details of all performances would be more than the revenue available.
In these cases the Alliance collects information about some of the performances and uses that to represent all of them. These samples might be certain days in a broadcaster’s schedule, or certain concert events and are selected at random to reflect their overall value.