Exclusive: US licensing platform Songtradr gets Aus rollout with SGC Media

A world-first music rights marketplace, which handles composers, songwriters, artists, labels, publishers, and music supervisors, has launched in Australia.

Songtradr was founded by producer-songwriterPaul Wiltshire, an LA-based, Australian expat who has worked with Vanessa Amorosi, Backstreet Boys, Human Nature and Delta Goodrem.

Launching locally with 15-year-old independent music marketing solutions group SGC Media, Songtradr is a world first for content owners. Available globally and with a free content management system (CMS) for all users, the platform connects owners of music together, cutting out some of the middle-men associated with music clearance.

Users are able to monetise their catalogues through Songtradr by uploading an unlimited number of songs and making those songs available for licensing.

The platform supplies the legal documentation for completion of any transactions for both buyer and seller and has its own music licensing and sales team pitching users’ music to TV, film, advertising among other music placement opportunities.

Paul Wiltshire told TMN: “We believe our audio player technology is the fastest on the internet (depending on local internet connection speed). Our playlist technology provides a very cool and intuitive way of pitching tracks in response to a creative brief for a particular project.”

Paul Wiltshire

Wiltshire has told TMN the relationship between Songtradr and its content partners is non-exclusive: “Songtradr acts as broker in any Synchronisation or Buy Out rights transaction. There are all types of users coming on to the platform ranging from songwriters, artists, bands, through to labels, publishers and production music libraries.”

Songtradr’s only revenue is a broker fee of 17.5% of any successful Synchronisation (license) or Buy Out on the platform.

The Australian rollout will be handled by SGC Media Group Managing Director Stephen Green, in conjunction with the Songtradr US team. Green will be coordinating with local labels, publishers, independent artists and songwriters as well as music buyers from the advertising, TV, film, gaming and web (MCNs) industries.

“SGC has a proven track record with independent artists, a strong marketing/PR team and a great sense of the intersection of tech and music,” Wiltshire said.

“We also see Australia as a tough market where synchlicensingopportunities are few in number despite the incredible talent in the country,” he added. “Our platform offersexposure for Australian music rights owners to a global market and in particular the US market.”

Green said Songtradr has the potential to revolutionise the way music rights licensing and trading happens at every level.

“From the moment I got my hands on the Songtradr platform, I knew that it could be a game-changer,” said Green. “It’s the first time I’ve seen a platform that can account for multiple writers, multiple publishers, multiple labels and other complexities that we face in our fragmented music industry, while at the same time taking care of contracting, pitching and other functions that are necessary to businesses across the sector.”

Wiltshire said the company encountered “many technological, legal and human challenges” leading up to its US beta launch in February.

“We are doing something that has never been achieved before,” he said. “One of the biggest issues we wanted to solve, was to make the transactional process for acquiring and licensing music simple and easy.

“Music rights are highly fragmented with the two fundamental rights in any track, the Master and Copyright, represented by two different sectors of the industry (the record and publishing businesses).”

The platform is now available globally with the majority of its users based in the US and its currency is listed in US dollars. However, the website at songtradr.com/ will eventually bemultilingual and there are plans to adopt other currencies.

“An important part of our mission is to empower artists and songwriters with the ability to completely control their rights by providing them the tools they need to do so.”

Songtradr’s CMS allows you to do the following:

1) Upload all of your music (preferably at the highest quality available i.e. 24bit/48khz wavs) for free (no limit)

2) Upload any related assets to your music such as Instrumental mixes, remixes, stems, lyrics etc. for free (no limit)

3) Enter all relevant copyright and master owner information (such as co-writers, publishers, administrators & labels)

4) Connect all rights owners together so that music can be licensed from multiple owners simultaneously and made available for immediate license transactions.

5) Have all of your music files, metadata, copyright data and music connections all in one place and make them discoverable (or not if you choose).

6) Select any of your music to be available for license using our variable pricing platform which automatically prices music based on proposed usage (i.e Production Type/Description/Use/Media/Term/Timing/Territory etc.) or choose your music to receive ’offers only’ so you can pick, choose and negotiate.

7) Opt-in on distribution to DSPs (Spotify/Pandora/Deezer etc.) and exclusive administration services (coming soon)