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Warner Music renews licensing deal with Soundtrack Your Brand

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 13 October 2020

Warner Music has renewed its licensing deal with B2B streaming platform Soundtrack Your Brand. The deal comes as Soundtrack Your Brand launches a new service called Soundtrack Unlimited, offering business customers more of the on-demand functionality available via Spotify type platforms.

Spotify was actually an early backer of Soundtrack Your Brand and powered the B2B service during a pilot period in key Nordic markets. However, since 2018 Soundtrack Your Brand has operated its own catalogue of music secured via licensing deals with the music industry. Warner was among the music companies to sign up back in 2018.

While announcing the new deal with Warner and the launch of Soundtrack Unlimited, the B2B streaming firm again points out that plenty of opportunities are still to be tapped in the business streaming domain.

Many companies still use personal Spotify or Apple Music accounts to stream music into their premises, but doing so actually breaches the terms and conditions of those consumer-facing services. The challenge for businesses like Soundtrack Your Brand and their music industry partners is persuading those companies to go legit and sign up to a B2B service, which charges a higher monthly subscription.

In addition to the extra revenue B2B streaming can generate, Soundtrack Your Brand also talks up the useful data it can provide to the music industry. “Soundtrack also provides invaluable data to Warner”, it states, “enabling the music company to see where and when its individual artists’ music is being played worldwide”.

Commenting on his new deal with Warner Music, Soundtrack Your Brand boss Ola Sars says: “Soundtrack is committed to increasing value in music streaming overall by fixing the broken and outdated background music market. Together with Warner Music we’re at the forefront of this change, driving innovation together in order to unlock value for music creators”.

“We’re increasing pricing by five to ten times and therefore significantly increasing royalties paid out to labels and artists”, he goes on, “all this enabled by a superior product offering throughout 74 markets. Now the whole industry needs to join forces and make sure that compliance is ensured across the B2B music market, as it’s our collective responsibility to help those trying to make a living from their art”.

Speaking for Warner, John Rees, the major’s SVP Global Business Development, adds: “Soundtrack Your Brand has created a first-class streaming service that’s tailored to deliver music and data insights to businesses across the world. Warner continues to support them during this exciting new chapter, so that we can work to ensure that fair value from the commercial sector is being returned to artists and creators. With the launch of the new on-demand product, businesses around the globe can now access Warner’s incredible catalogue in new ways”.