NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES: Universal Music Publishing Group has contracted with TuneSat to track music played on broadcast TV. TuneSat is a relatively new start-up that uses audio fingerprinting to identify songs used in TV shows, thus marking them for copyright use. TuneSat says its software can identify a piece of music in as little as three seconds, played alone or behind voices, sound effects or other noise.
The music-rights management group SESAC signed up with TuneSat last month. The organization previously relied on hard-copy cue sheets, for the most part. Those cue sheets, SESAC said, were “notorious for being filed incorrectly, late and in some cases, not at all.”
SESAC, along with ASCAP and BMI collect around $2 billion a year in royalties for recording artists. Universal also has its own proprietary tracking system called “Royalty Window,” but added TuneSat’s complementary technology.
“We believe in using technology to give our writers an edge in tracking and getting remuneration for their music,” said David Renzer, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group.
For more on TuneSat, see...
May 10, 2010: “SESAC Contracts TuneSat to Track TV Music”
The organization today announced a deal with TuneSat, a small New York company launched in 2007 that allows subscribers to track occurrences of song titles, artists and clip lengths.
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