Music Publishing News Weekly Roundup 7.11.14: Bop.fm, Rap Genius, UMPG + Moodagent
Bop.fm has raised $2 Million in funding from Charles River Venutures. Launched in December 2013 by CEO Shehzad Daredia, the startup music streaming service provides a single platform for users listen to any song from any music service. With Rdio, Beats, Deezer, Spotify, Youtube, and Soundcloud integrated into their system, Bop.fm is attempting to bridge the gap between the several growing music services that may have different catalogs available. The company has also verified several of their artists and included tour dates, song lyrics, and playlists in their profiles. They hope that artists will also use their link to reach the user base of each service. With the new funding, the startup will allow their 6 employee staff to hire more engineers and expand their growing listener base.
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Rap Genius has secured a licensing deal with Warner/Chappell. Following legal attack from rights holders since launching in 2009, the lyric and annotation site will now be free to publish lyrics from the vast catalog of Warner/Chappell including Katy Perry, Paramore, and Ariana Grande. This is the final deal of the major publishers the site needed to secure following deals with UMPG in January and SONY/ATV in November 2013. The site also came to a legal agreement with the NMPA last May agreeing to properly compensate composers for the use of their works.
UMPG has partnered with Moodagent to incorporate Music Tagging into their repertoire searches. The Denmark based company specializes in music analysis and navigation and will provide metadata tags for all UMPG tags. With this system in place, clients will be able to seamlessly search the UMPG catalog based on keywords including moods and genres.
