Concord renews partnership with Pan-European licensing hub ICE Core in multi-year deal

Photo credit: Holly Tutor
Jim Selby

Concord has renewed its multi-year partnership with Pan-European licensing hub, ICE Services.

According to a press release from ICE, having been a direct member of the ICE Core since 2018, Concord “has seen significantly increasing royalties, with an average year-on-year rise of more than 34% since 2020”.

ICE was formed by three collection societies: PRS for Music (UK), STIM (Sweden) and GEMA (Germany).

The ICE Core license includes the repertoire of these collection societies, among others, as well as independent publishers like Concord, Songtrust and peermusic, and of other independent publishers represented through PRS’s Core Collective initiative.

The hub ensures royalty flows to collection societies and indie publishers. With over 330,000 rightsholders represented, ICE has distributed more than €3 billion (approx. USD $3.2 million) in royalties since March 2016.

ICE Core has also expanded its reach in recent years, extending to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Sub-Saharan Africa. This expansion, according to Concord, has facilitated fast and accurate royalty flows to rightsholders from a broader range of territories.

“It’s a genuinely customer-centric partnership that we enjoy with everyone at ICE, and that extends well beyond doing the initial deal.”

Jim Selby, Concord

“We continue to see tremendous performance as part of the ICE Core and are excited by the future opportunities,” said Jim Selby, Chief Publishing Officer, Concord.

“It’s a genuinely customer-centric partnership that we enjoy with everyone at ICE, and that extends well beyond doing the initial deal. Backing up deep market understanding with systems that efficiently and effectively deliver actual royalties enables us to in turn deliver more to our writers.“

Ben McEwen, Chief Commercial Officer at ICE, highlighted the importance of their longstanding relationship with Concord. 

“The ICE Core brings together and supports a wide variety of rightsholder customers to deliver shared benefits, including leading independent publishers such as Concord.”

McEwen added: “We look forward to continuing to deliver royalties and enable our customers to provide new services for the songwriters and composers we all serve.”

“We look forward to continuing to deliver royalties and enable our customers to provide new services for the songwriters and composers we all serve.”

Ben McEwen, ICE Services

Concord Music Publishing, with offices in various cities worldwide, owns or administers over 800,000 copyrighted musical works, representing renowned songwriters, composers, and lyricists across multiple genres and territories. 

Concord is also home to classical music publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, and operates exclusive joint ventures with top pop music publisher, Pulse Music Group and Hillary Lindsey’s Hang Your Hat Music.

The agreement with Concord follows ICE Services’ new licensing deal struck with gaming and metaverse startup STYNGR. The partnership enables STYNGR to offer players access to ICE Core’s extensive music repertoire for use in online games.

ICE introduced Licensr, an online self-service tool in 2020. Licensr aims to provide smaller online music services with multi-territory coverage to access the vast repertoire of ICE Core. 

In December, Austrian collection society AKM (together with its subsidiary austro mechana), joined the ICE Core’s licensing representation for online music services.

ICE also has multi-territory licensing deals with FacebookTikTok and US rival Triller.

Music Business Worldwide

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