EMI PUBLISHING SEIZES DIGITAL FROM ASCAP

EMI Music Publishing announced it will assume direct responsibility for licensing digital rights previously represented by North American performing rights society ASCAP.

In a move designed to streamline the digital music licensing process, EMI reasserts its . exclusive rights to license performing rights for its EMI April Music catalog to an array of audio streaming music, video and "cloud" services. EMI April Music is one of EMI Music Publishing two largest catalogs, featuring almost 200k of the most popular songs ever written.

ASCAP will continue to license EMI’s performance rights with respect to traditional media services, including television and radio stations.

For its EMI April catalog , EMI Music Publishing will now be able to license in one transaction all necessary rights to a number of online services whether they need a mechanical license, a synchronization license, a performance license or all three.

This follows a growing trend in the music business established by several prominent indie labels and acts, including Radiohead, to control their own digital distribution.

Commented EMI's Faxon: “The digital world demands a new way of licensing rights in musical compositions. Today we are embarking on that new way. We are reunifying the rights in many of the songs that we represent. By bringing these rights back together our aim is to reduce the burden of licensing, to create greater efficiency and importantly to reduce the barriers to the development of innovative new services. That absolutely has to be in the interest of everybody involved in the process, including songwriters, licensees and consumers alike. I am very pleased that ASCAP will continue to license EMI’s performing rights to music users in all traditional media.”

This is the latest in a series of actions by EMI Music Publishing to ease the complexity in the digital licensing space. In 2006, the company established CELAS, becoming the first publisher to enable pan-European licensing for its Anglo-American repertoire from a single source. EMI is also playing a lead role in the working group established last year to establish a Global Rights Database as a common framework for rights ownership information for musical works.