IBM and Sacem to develop online copyright platform

IBM and the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (Sacem), a creative collective management organisation, have entered into a ten-year collaboration plan to develop a copyright platform.

The copyright platform, URights, is designed to track and capture music creators’ and publishers’ rights.

Built on the IBM Cloud, a cloud-based data and analytics platform, URights will offer creators and publishers new services to help them access and analyse market analytics.

Jean-Noël Tronc, CEO of Sacem, said: “We are passionate about ensuring a sustainable creative future by using the latest technology to enhance efficiency in identifying the usage of our members’ works—in any digital media, on any web platform.”

He added that the platform will enable Sacem to better “optimise collections and distributions” to its members “and for all the repertoires we are mandated to protect, in the most transparent way”.

According to a statement released today, January 12, the platform will allow Sacem “to provide additional value to rights owners with increased data analysis allowing more transparency and a more efficient identification of online works to help ensure they are compensated fairly”.

Sacem distributed royalties to 293,000 authors, composers and publishers worldwide for more than 2 million works in 2015.

Steve Canepa, general manager, global telecommunications, media and entertainment industry of IBM, said: “The music and media industries face many complex challenges in the management of copyright materials from music to visual creation.”

He explained that the combination of IBM’s digital skills and advanced analytics running on IBM’s “global, secure hybrid cloud” can he lp Sacem to “lead the industry to track and capture the value of online music”.

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