1st March 2002
 

Radio stations to gain one touch access to European music

A consortium of pan-European music organisations has launched a project to enable radio stations and Webcasters to access 200,000 tracks of independent music from all over Europe.

Entitled EmuCast, short for European Music Broad- and Web Cast, it will create a tailored service supplying independent music to broadcasters and webcasters and simplifying reporting to rightsholders and producers.

Vienna cheap hotelsThe two year project was given the green light at the offices of the EC Information Society in Luxembourg, who have provided funding from the E-content fund.

The consortium is a mix of broadcasters, radio stations, content providers and digital rights management companies. They are pooling their skills to encode and database the music (25,000 tracks from the UK, 25,000 tracks from Germany, 25,000 from French territory, in addition to existing tracks from Spain and Latin territory, as well as Scandinavia) to be accessible on-line by the participating radio stations in Germany, Greece, Norway and Spain.

The music will eventually be available to any radio station granted access to the database. This will allow radio stations throughout Europe to have access to independent music without having to maintain huge music libraries.

The consortium comprises:

... The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation
... Musicindie
... Artspages International AS
... Sociedad Digital des Autores y Editores
... Sender Freies Berlin
... Mondomix SARL
... Flash Radio, and
... VUT, the German association of independent record producers

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About the consortium partners:

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (Norway)
NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, has, since the 1930's, been the leading Norwegian media institution. NRK has experience in publishing recorded programme material such as music and drama on CD, and participates in the Nordic Phonofile programme together with other broadcasters, record companies and rights holder organisations. New plans for development also include a Norwegian Internet Music Dictionary. NRK has large music archives which include many of the institution's own recordings.
www.nrk.no

Artspages International AS (Europe, International)
Artspages is a company controlled by independent rights holders. Over the last three years, it has been working with creative communities (creative artists, performers, managers, producers and publishers) around the world to specify, develop and validate an integrated business-to-business platform for the world's creative communities.

Artspages will host the metadatabase and archive of EMUCAST. Several clients of Artspages outside Europe may also join Emucast to secure an even richer content base for the radio stations.

Sender Freies Berlin (Germany)
Sender Freies Berlin is the branch of Germany's national public radio and TV-network ARD for the federal state Berlin. SFB regularly broadcasts four radio channels and one local TV channel plus two more radio channels in co-operation with ORB, the sister station for the federal state of Brandenburg. Radio Multikulti has been broadcasting since Sept. 18th 1994 on FM in 18 mother tongues as well as the lingua franca German.

Mondomix SARL (France)
Mondomix is the first online weekly magazine structured around the theme of World Music. Already comprising more than 10,000 pages, the site today exists in French and English and generates 30,000 unique visitors each month.

Flash Radio, (Greece)
FLASH 9.61 was established in Athens in 1989 and belongs to FLASH S.A Radio and Television Programme Enterprises company. It is mainly a news and talk-radio station, but the daily schedule includes many music or other entertainment shows.

Musicindie (UK)
Musicindie is an independent company set up and part-owned by the UK's Association of Independent Music (AIM). Its remit is to research and implement ways in which to increase UK independent labels' market share. Current plans include a unique new database development to power more creative deals for the record industry, negotiation services and economy of scale software including a flexible e-commerce tool kit.

AIM is a non-profit making trade body established in 1998 by UK independent record labels to represent the independent record sector across the UK in all genres.
www.musicindie.org

VUT, (Germany)
VUT (the German Association Of Independent Record Companies, Music Publishers and Music Producers) is a non-profit making organisation founded in 1993.

VUT represents over 600 members, and engages in a variety of activities on their behalf, from negotiating discount rates on various services, to agreements with industry bodies and seminars and workshops on relevant topics.

Sociedad Digital de Autores y Editores (Spain)
discounted hotels Noordwijk aan ZeesDae is the recently created digital branch of Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), one of the largest collecting societies in the world, with a catalogue administering approximately 2 million musical themes, theatre, dances, movies - mostly of Latin repertoire.

Expert in digital rights management, sDae is in charge of creating and directing SGAE's strategy in the digital world. SDae's work is essential for guaranteeing SGAE's partners (more than 60,000, both authors and publishers) the protection and promotion of their cultural repertoire in the digital environment.

ENDS