Royalty collection platform Songtrust has signed an agreement with pan-European licensing hub, ICE Services Ltd.
Under the terms of the new agreement, signed with Songtrust’s parent company, Downtown, ICE will provide a range of digital licensing and back-office royalty processing services for the Songtrust platform and its client base of more than 100,000 songwriters and 11,000 music publishers.
As a result of the deal, Songtrust – which manages over 1m copyrights – becomes the first royalty administration platform to become a client of ICE.
ICE’s other clients include stakeholders such as PRS For Music (UK), STIM (Sweden) and GEMA (Germany).
“This direct relationship with the ICE Core allows us to eliminate parallel processing through other incompatible society works databases. This will result in quicker, more efficient and accurate digital royalty distribution across the Songtrust platform and extended to its fast-growing songwriter and publisher client base.”
Roberto Neri, Downtown
“Continuously refining our platform and process to provide our clients with the fastest, most efficient royalty collection solution in the market is core to our vision,” said Joe Conyers, Co-founder and General Manager of Songtrust.
“Finding a business partner capable of managing the enormous scale and volume of our platform is no easy task. While many vendors are actively working on solutions, the ICE offering is by far and away the most compelling and sophisticated offering in the marketplace today.”
Roberto Neri, UK Managing Director of Downtown, the parent company of Songtrust, said: “We’ve been looking at shaping the digital market from the outset.
“This direct relationship with the ICE Core allows us to eliminate parallel processing through other incompatible society works databases. This will result in quicker, more efficient and accurate digital royalty distribution across the Songtrust platform and extended to its fast-growing songwriter and publisher client base.”
Ben McEwen, Commercial Director at ICE Services said, “We are clearly delighted that an increasingly important, progressive, and technologically capable publisher such as Downtown and Songtrust has chosen to include its repertoire within ICE’s Core licence and is willing to demonstrate their confidence and appreciation of our administration capabilities in this way. We are very excited about working together in this new collaboration.”
This news comes weeks after Songtrust announced the expansion of its operations into Europe, with a new Netherlands-based HQ.
Its Songtrust Business Services division provides bespoke solutions for corporate clients including CD Baby, Distrokid, Downtown Music Publishing, The Orchard, Sub Pop Publishing, and Trap Nation.
ICE Services, based in London, offers services for publishers, Collection Management Organisations (CMOs) and rights-holders. These include multi-territorial online licensing processing as well as licensing solutions for Digital Service Providers.Music Business Worldwide
