Canada’s SOCAN acquires B2B digital platform MediaNet

Canada SOCAN_logo ’s rights society SOCAN has made a major technology investment with the purchase of Seattle-based B2B digital platform and data management company MediaNet. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Privately-held MediaNet — originally founded as MusicNet in 1999 by EMI, AOL, BMG and RealNetworks — operates a database of over 4.1 million rights holders and their respective works and has developed music and metadata delivery technologies that work with streaming services, download providers, media search, and other media discovery tools. With a catalogue of 51 million sound recordings, MediaNet has powered digital music services worldwide such as Beats Music, Pulselocker, CÜR Music, Songza, Target, and Univision.

Source: Canada’s SOCAN acquires B2B digital platform MediaNet | Music Week

RightsTech Extra

AI Companies Get the Picture

By Paul Sweeting

One of the biggest challenges facing copyright owners in grappling with the rapid development of generative AI technology, apart from a murky legal status, has been market failure, as discussed here in previous posts. The amount of existing material needed to train gen-AI models is so great, and so varied, that gauging the value of any one piece of it to establish a market price for it for licensing purposes is often effectively impossible. One group of rights owners is finding willing buyers among AI companies, however. An active, albeit for various reasons mostly sotto voce market has begun to emerge for the use of images held in large photo archives and by photo agencies and social media platforms, complete with per-unit industry and at least a nod toward creator attribution... Read More >>

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