For MIDEM 2011 (January 22-26), CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, has invited a number of industry experts to Cannes to share practical advice on music licensing during two panel discussions: MidemNet’s “Music Licensing Crash Test” (Jan 22) and the CISAC hosted MIDEM session “Digital Services & Authors’ Societies — Building Efficient Partnerships” (Jan 24). CISAC will also unveil its highly anticipated annual Global Economic Survey of royalty collections for authors’ rights during the week.
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Improved tracking – and therefore more accurate payments – is becoming a major issue with members of author’s rights societies worldwide. The US body Sesac is introducing tracking using Vericast, from BMAT, to more accurately track music usage for select publishers. BMAT uses real-time audio recognition to spot the tracks being used in advertising and radio, even recognising music under a voice-over or that has been put through effects. Traditionally, societies have had to rely on users declaring uses. But this is a cumbersome system to manage, the result being that most payments could best be described as “guesstimates”.

Systems such as BMAT, however, are expensive. This is probably why Sesac in its press release says “Thousands of audio files from select SESAC publisher affiliates will be monitored across top broadcast and cable outlets”. In other words, they are focussing on the top earners from the top publishers at major media outlets. So although this will improve accuracy, it will most likely only do so for higher earners. For more details, visit Sesac and BMAT.