OCL announces agreements with leading music rights holders

12 June 2018 - Press release

Deals Now in Place with Warner Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Beggars Group and Bucks Music

OCL, the London based technology company specialising in helping app developers, content owners and music fans work as partners instead of adversaries, over contentious issues like User Generated Content (UGC), has announced agreements with a number of leading music rights holders.

App developers will now be able to easily source licensed music as they build their products and offerings thanks to new deals between OCL and Warner Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Beggars Group and Bucks Music among others.  

Previously app developers had to approach rights holders individually and negotiate access to licensed music before they could develop their product.  Some developers chose to use unlicensed music, opening them up to potential legal action, while more were simply put off from engaging with music.

OCL’s ‘Totem’ service will enable app developers to access licensed music as they build and beta test their products.  The aim is that this will lower barriers to entry and spur additional innovation, while ensuring rights holders are paid fairly for their music.

OCL is in active conversations with additional rights holders, adding new agreements on a weekly basis.   

PJ Dulay, SVP, Music, OCL, said: “We are confident that our approach and technology will open up significant new revenue for the music industry.  We’ve listened to rights holders and licensees and developed a licensing solution that addresses both their needs. Simplicity is the hardest thing to design and we’re delighted that many rights holders have faith in us."

John Rees, Vice President, Digital Strategy & Business Development, Warner Music, said, “Warner Music is excited to work with OCL’s rights transaction solution, to help facilitate music licensing within the app developer community. The partnership aims to bring innovation and development around music, delivering great new consumer experiences, whilst ensuring rights holders and artists are equitably compensated.”

Simon Wheeler, Director Digital, Beggars Group said, “We love the idea that we can accelerate the use of high quality licensed music within the app ecosystem via OCL technology.  Enabling the massive developer community to use, report and pay for music rights as simply as they buy in servers or bandwidth will be a new area of growth for the music industry and finally remove any arguments for 'launch first and pay for forgiveness later.”