19 February 2013

Teosto and BMAT carry out a pioneering live music identification pilot in Finland

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

Policies

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence brings about many new opportunities for our lives, including in the field of culture and creativity, but its applications also raise a number of ethical and legal questions due to their wide-spread uncontrolled and unchecked usage.

Policies

Music Streaming

Music streaming has unquestionably become the predominant means of enjoying music, replacing traditional physical media and expanded far beyond the live sector by providing user-friendly, high quality, and affordable access to the largest possible repertoire anytime, anywhere, online, or offline.

Songs and compositions are at the heart of this thriving market, which counts 524 million users on subscription-based music services globally, reaches more than 2 billion users including the streaming on UGC platforms, and offers more than 70 million tracks from approximately 8 million artists.

Yet, the authors and composers cannot benefit adequately from this success, and the debate over unfairness of this market is gaining traction across Europe and around the world.

There is a need to look more closely at how songwriters and composers are connected to this thriving economy and what can be done to improve their currently neglected situation.

Read below to find out more about the Music Streaming market.

Policies

Buy-out contracts: a dangerous threat to European creators

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Online audiovisual services and broadcasters that are mainly US-based are forcing music creators to accept such contracts, which enforce a one-time payment in exchange for their rights.

Given the worldwide popularity of shows and series on platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Disney etc., and their replay value, the audiovisual market represents an important revenue stream for creators. Soundtracks alone are part and parcel of series and often attract a similar amount of popularity, massively boosting sales, streams and the worldwide fanbase of their authors.

Read below to find out how video on demand (VOD) platforms and broadcasters are circumventing EU law and what can be done about it.

Policies

Authors’ societies & the collective management model

Authors’ societies are hugely beneficial to both authors (creators), users (platforms and services), and the broader public.

Beyond benefiting these different groups, authors’ societies also support the broader cultural ecosystem by funding and promoting cultural and creative initiatives.

Below are five key benefits to authors’ societies and the collective management model.

Policies

The Copyright Directive

In April 2019, the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market was formally adopted, a change that will positively transform authors’ rights throughout the EU. Each member state now has until 7 June 2021 to transpose the Directive into their respective national law.

This reform is an opportunity to address pressing issues for authors in the Digital Single Market and will promote the growth of Europe’s creative and cultural industries (CCIs) – a major driver of Europe’s economy.

One of the biggest achievements of this new piece of legislation was to address the
‘Transfer of Value’ problem, a priority issue for all European creators.

Below are some of the Directive’s key areas that will affect creators and those who profit from their work.