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The Finnish performing rights organization Teosto and Spanish music technology company BMAT carried out a pioneering research pilot in June 2012, applying BMAT’s music identification technology for the automated reporting of musical works performed at a live music event. BMAT’s technology was put to the test in a real life festival setting, to provide input for a new live music reporting concept currently being developed at Teosto.

The pilot was carried out with three Finnish bands (Nightwish, PMMP and Notkea Rotta) at Provinssirock, one of Finland’s largest rock festivals. The shows were recorded, analysed by BMAT and the results were evaluated by Teosto.

Live music – a challenging environment

While automated music broadcast monitoring for online, radio and TV is already an established market, the automated identification of musical works performed at live shows remains a technological challenge. Changes in tempo, key, instrumentation and song structure, together with audience sounds and the acoustic characteristics of a live venue, make it difficult to accurately match a live version to a studio recording of the same song The piloted technology compares the live audio to a reference set of studio recordings and provides a list of matching song pairs.

Positive results

The results of the technology pilot were promising: the piloted technology provided very good results for two out of the three pilot shows, and worked especially well for works in the mainstream pop/rock genre. While certain limitations remain, it is likely that music identification technologies can in the near future provide a reliable way for music copyright organizations and other music industry players to detect and verify setlist data from live music events.

“Emerging music identification technologies for the live music market should benefit music authors by enabling an automated, cost-effective and fast performance royalty distribution process.Teosto wants to be at the forefront tackling the technological challenges of music rights administration for the future, and these types of state of the art technologies are one part of the solution.”

Katri Sipilä, CEO, Teosto

“At BMAT, we are committed to constantly improve the reach and quality of our monitoring services, building on our tradition and expertise of tracking commercial and production music across terrestrial broadcasts and digital streams worldwide. 

In the midst of expanding our monitoring solutions into other environments, our partner Teosto came to us with a live music identification project and we loved it. Listening to the needs of our clients and giving support where it matters most lies at the core of our company values. We are very proud to work with Teosto, with whom we share the vision of new royalty distribution methods.”
Alex Loscos, CEO of BMAT

Big thanks to Marielle Gallo, MEP and the rapporteur steering the Collective Rights Management Directive draft through European Parliament, for publishing the proposal’s timeline on her website.

If you’re curious, here it is below:

18th March: JURI hearing on Collective Right Management

19th March: Exchange of views on the working document

27th March: IP Forum on Collective Right Management

29-30 May: Exchange of views on the Draft Report

20th June: Consideration of Amendments

9th July: Vote on the report during JURI committee

We’ll be actively participating in the debate as far as we can, working hard to produce a final draft that best serves creators, users and the European digital economy.

For more information on the proposal, click here.

The undersigned European organisations of authors, performers and producers have taken note of the recommendations presented by Mr Antonio Vitorino, which mark the conclusion of the mediation process on private copying levies initiated by the European Commission.

We strongly disagree with the main orientations recommended by Mr Vitorino. In the event that the European Commission were to accept these recommendations, the result would: i) have a negative effect on consumers; ii) damage the interests of rightholders (and thus damage the development of European culture); and iii) increase the complexity of licensing agreements. The parties that would benefit are only importers and manufacturers of recording media/devices, which are mainly non EU companies.

Our main concern is that licensing is seen as a way of eradicating private copying levies, which is contrary to the model applied today in most EU countries where both systems are complementary. By adopting such a position, Mr Vitorino goes back in time to when the very principle of the private copying exception in the digital era was challenged by those who called for the implementation of technical protection measures instead. This was not the solution ultimately chosen in Europe under the 2001 Copyright Directive.

By stating that copies made by end-users for private purposes from a licensed service do not cause any harm (therefore not requiring the corresponding remuneration from private copying levies), Mr Vitorino basically suggests eliminating private copying levies, notably for so called “new business models in the digital environment”.

This appears to represent a gross misconception of the private copying system. Licensed services receive authorisation for the exploitation of works based on the specificities of each business model, while the remuneration for private copying is organised through the levy-based system to guarantee that users are able to make private copies, whatever the service’s business model.

With this recommendation, Mr Vitorino proposes to get rid of the exception when services are licensed, under the assumption that rightholders should include the price of private copies in the authorisation.

Ahead of the 7-8 February Special Summit on the EU’s Multi-Annual Financial Framework, the European Platform on the potential of Cultural and Creative Industries (‘The Platform’) – a group of more than 40 organisations representing a wide range of cultural and creative sectors – calls on EU Member States to adopt a strong budget for ‘Creative Europe’, the 2014-2020 programme for the cultural and creative sectors.

In current times of economic crisis, and as budgets for culture are being cut in many member states, the Platform believes it is crucial to have an ambitious budget for the Creative Europe Programme.