Online royalties paid out by the likes of Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify and YouTube jumped by 60% for a powerful set of independent publishers last year.
The figure refers to distributions made by IMPEL, which collectively licenses Anglo-American mechanical digital rights in Europe for publishers including Beggars Music, Imagem, SONGS Music Publishing and more.
The growth was completely driven by streaming (thanks to hits from songwriters like SONGS-signed The Weeknd, pictured), which comfortably offset declines from download platforms.
IMPEL’s 46 members also include publishers such as Bucks Music Group, Mute Song, peermusic, Reservoir Media, Sentric Music, Spirit B-Unique and The Music Sales Group, with repertoire covering Elvis, the Stones, Bowie, Drake, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson and many more.
MBW understands that UK-based IMPEL’s total annual distribution in 2016 easily topped £15m ($19m) – more than double the money it handed out just 3 years previously.
“IMPEL is growing in all directions and 2017 is going to be a ground-breaking year for us.”
IMPEL’s figures are all the more impressive when compared side-by-side with the wider music market.
In the recorded music world, for example, digital music retail revenues grew 15.8% across streaming and download in the UK market in 2016 (up to £633.1m), according to ERA data.
And in Germany, digital retail revenues were up by approximately 26.2% last year (to €600.4m) according to recently released BVMI data.
Jane Dyball, CEO of IMPEL said: “IMPEL is a major player now in the digital space. By uniting their repertoire and pro-actively engaging with the digital community the independent publishers are operating on a par with the majors. With repertoire spanning decades, genres and which has been recorded by iconic artists from Elvis to Bowie to Drake, the IMPEL repertoire has become an essential repertoire for digital services.
“IMPEL is growing in all directions and 2017 is going to be a ground-breaking year for us.”
“The speed and transparency [of IMPEL] has been of great benefit to our western hemisphere writers and the catalogues we are fortunate to represent within Europe.”
Ralph PeeR II, Peermusic
CISAC‘s report for 2015 shows online mechanical (‘reproduction’) royalty collections in Europe for all publishers stood at 11.5% of €839.3m – which amounts to €96.5m (£70.4m).
Simon Platz, MD, Bucks Music Group and IMPEL Board Chair, said: “Through our exponential growth in revenue we are attracting more members to, what is now, a major player in the digital licensing world.”
Rell Lafargue, COO, Reservoir/ Reverb Music, said: “Reservoir/Reverb Music’s Pan-European royalties have seen triple digit growth, year on year, since joining IMPEL. IMPEL helps to level the playing-field for independent music publishers and our songwriters, as we continue to top European charts time and time again. The indie sector is robust, as these impressive statistics illustrate.”
And Ralph Peer II, CEO, peermusic, commented: “Since becoming the first independent publisher to undertake pan European digital licensing in 2008 and subsequently joining IMPEL we have enjoyed exceptional growth in the royalties generated from this structure.
“Having the benefit a single point of quality data collection for all European PEL royalties ingested and processed by our purpose built proprietary software makes the end-to-end procedure efficient and transparent.
“The resulting speed and transparency has been of great benefit to our western hemisphere writers and the catalogues we are fortunate to represent within Europe and has led us to institute additional pan-regional licensing schemes in other global regions where peermusic operates on the front line.”Music Business Worldwide
