Sony Music and Warner Music have signed up to Brazil based CMO UBC (Brazilian Union of Composers) to track and collect royalties for the use of their catalogues throughout Brazil.
With the new labels on board, UBC has bolstered its neighbouring rights department to enable it to effectively track and monetise the repertoire.
In Brazil, neighbouring rights are licensed together with publishing and performance rights.
That’s differs to most territories such as the UK, for example, where PPL collects neighbouring rights, while PRS handles publishing performance rights.
UBC also represents the publishing rights of Warner/Chappell and Sony/ATV.
Both Warner and Warner/Chappell were previously represented by local society ABRAMUS, as was Sony.
In addition, UBC has signed the label arm of major local label Som Livre, which is part of South American media group Globo.
SoundExchange is also represented in Brazil by UBC.
“Our focus on the neighbouring rights side of our business in the past months has resulted in these new affiliations, of which we are very proud.”
peter strauss, ubc
Peter Strauss, UBC’s International Relations Manager, said: “The neighbouring rights division will specialise in maintaining and inputting new registrations of rights holders and repertoire.
“It aims to guarantee that labels, both major and independent, can count on a more agile turnover of registrations, resolution of conflicting information, and the release of previously unidentified royalties.
“Additionally, UBC has invested in technology so the vast repertoire represented by the major labels can be quickly registered.
“Our focus on this side of the business in the past months has resulted in these new affiliations, of which we are very proud.”
UBC is a non-profit organisation for the collective management of music rights of Brazilian and foreign creators, publishers, performers and producers.
Ecad is its umbrella organisation, which acts as a collection agency for the Brazilian PROs.
Last year, UBC paid out its first streaming distribution from royalties earned from the use of music on digital services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Vevo and Deezer, among other local services.
More than 88,000 music right owners represented by UBC received over BRL 1.2 million, which represents more than 55% of the total distribution for digital rights in Brazil.
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