TORONTO and SEATTLE – The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) has acquired business-to-business music technology provider MediaNet in a move that could help Canadian artists to better collect their royalties. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
MediaNet is the creator of music and metadata delivery technologies that work with streaming services, download providers, media search, and other media discovery tools to provide a catalog of music, while ensuring that creators and music publishers, including artists and all relevant rights owners, are properly compensated for their work.
The performing rights organization said Thursday that MediaNet will provide it with authoritative information pertaining to master rights (sound recordings), and will augment its matching capabilities for all kinds of performances and reproductions of music on radio, digital, live, satellite, film and TV and other delivery of music to public audiences.
"The music ecosystem is in need of data and accuracy and, with MediaNet, SOCAN is the first major music collective to meet this need," said SOCAN CEO Eric Baptiste, in the news release. "The expanded family of MediaNet and SOCAN creates an unbeatable combination that will help drive proper compensation for SOCAN's membership base of songwriters, composers and music publishers and potentially for all parties involved in the music value chain."
MediaNet will continue to operate under its current name, with all of its 34 employees continuing at the organization's Seattle offices. MediaNet CEO Frank Johnson and the company's leadership team will remain in place.
"SOCAN is a leader in ushering the transition from physical to digital through a commitment to data and artist advocacy," added Johnson. "We are thrilled to join the SOCAN family and realize our shared goal of pioneering high-scale technology solutions that ensure fair and accurate royalty administration."
SOCAN is a member-based organization that represents the Canadian performing rights of more than four-million Canadian and international music creators and publishers.
