IPMG London Event Recap – Nov 2021

Back in the mists of time of November 2021, between Delta and Omicron waves, 60 or so publishers managed to congregate from around the world in the illustrious setting of the Royal Society building on Carlton Terrace, London for the newly-formed IPMG’s first ever live event.

L-R: Martin Nedved (IPMG Chairman), Juliette Metz (IPMG Secretary, Dan Graham (IPMG Executive Director)

What did we learn?

Before we get to that, special thanks go to the combined work of the venue staff and Jenny McLeod-Aggrey (ICMP) who managed to turn a pandemic-hit corner of the world into an island of exceptionally well-organised bonhomie, and just for a day helped us remember being 3D humans with bodies in a space, not a bunch of flat Zoom faces.

Micro-licensing: disrupting the disrupters

Moderated by Einar Helde (APL Publishing), panelists Jenn Anderson Miller (Audiosocket) and Jesse Worstell (Adrev) discussed the potential of the micro-licensing market (which typically means selling low-priced subscriptions to YouTube content creators).

Einar: “quote from Einar!”

YouTube ContentID problems & solutions

Moderated by Dan Graham (Gothic Storm Music, Executive Director of the IMPG), Jesse Worstell (Adrev) and Ray Pagden (CEO of Motus Music) discussed advertising revenue from unlicensed uses of music on YouTube.

YouTube income is now growing to be a major income source for library music but problems include a lack of performance income for allowlisted videos. A golden suggestion came from an audience member who is claiming fantastic results from chasing large YouTube channels for licenses, instead of sitting back and collecting the low advertising revenue. Obvious, but not many people are doing this!

IPMG TV surveys: the dominance of production music on TV

Moderator Martin Nedved (Studio Fontana, Chairman of the IPMG), spoke to Sebastian Bonneau (Myma) and Luis Ruano from BMAT.

BMAT were commissioned by the IPMG to monitor the use of production music on TV in the UK, France and Germany. Production music was found to be unexpectedly dominant, used 2x (France), 3x (Germany) and 6x (UK) more than commercial music.

This raises serious questions about whether production music is being shut out unfairly of discussions with royalty societies and TV networks due to a huge underestimation of its market share.

Virtual Presentation by John Phelan, ICMP Director General

Brussels-based John Phelan is the Director General of the ICMP, the single most important international music publishing industry organisation, which represents almost 90% of the world’s music.

John explained that the DSA (Digital Services Act) are Europe’s new flagship laws for online platforms. The core political aim of the DSA is to put in practice “what is illegal offline, must be illegal online”, thereby creating better copyright and licensing protection for the music industry.

John Phelan explained: “The ICMP is working on the Regulation with the EU. It builds on the 2019 ‘Article 17’, which established that platforms such as YouTube Facebook, Twitch Triller etc.  cannot have a Safe Harbour (i.e. be made legally responsible for content shared on their platforms) and must take a full and licence for millions works.

The DSA will set liability rules and obligations on an even larger number of digital services e.g. search engines, app stores, hosting sites and ISPs. In turn this will help future global standards. The goals include clear, high-standard, legal obligations for licensing, b2b transparency and expeditious removal of all unlicensed music.

The ongoing lobby by ‘Big Tech’ is constant, complex and uncompromising – the sector is using a €97 million lobby spend in Brussels in 2022.”

Thanks for coming everyone who did and if not, see you at the next event!