Music As A Service: Audiosocket Launches Music Licensing API
Music licensing and technology company Audiosocket, is launching a unique digital music licensing platform dubbed Music as a Service (MaaS). Anywhere that MaaS is embedded, content producers can offer the ability to search for and license music from a curated catalog of 33,000 songs from 1,900 mostly indie artists and share in the revenue generated. An example might be YouTube offering users a legally licensed soundtrack to accompany a video.
Artists set their own prices and split revenue with Audiosocket after a percentage is shared with the embedding site. The Maas open API offers integration for photo and video sharing services, gaming platforms, digital agencies and social networks.
"All these emerging digital media platforms just have tons of users and very creative communities that also need music licenses," he says. "The MaaS platform was built out of the realization of the size and needs of that market. This is allowing us to reach a much broader audience.
Brent and the team at Audiosocket are great people and phenomenally talented. Congrats to them on creating something smart, useful, and (hopefully) successful!
Given the mass of music out there, this sounds like a good idea.
Hi Bruce
Sounds interesting. Seems like they are working on a good project. I’m sure that in the future, music licensing will be one of the most important sources of income for musicians.
I work for the music platform http://www.restorm.com. We offer a similar but more artist-based way of earning money with music licenses. restorm.com charges only 10% commission on the licensing fee. Anybody can set up an account in just minutes.
See how it works here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACRjpUjxTA
Currently, artist can set up their account and upload songs ready for licensing. The platform opens to licensees in fall 2011.
It will be exciting to see, whether this form of licensing will work for a broader audience in the near future.
Kind regards
Jonas
One of the best things Audiosocket is their exclusivity. Their catalog contains only 1900 artists, despite the huge volume of music sent to them for consideration every week. Their screening standards save time for the people who need a specific piece of original music. As a musician, the more difficult it is to get my song into a catalog, the better. I don’t want to be associated with a “stock” catalog. And I’d rather get 50% of a real deal, get my music heard, and build relationships in the industry, than get a theoretical 90% of a deal that never happens because the people with the money are not listening. They already have unlimited access to millions of unscreened songs. Bottom line: Audiosocket improves the odds by orders of magnitude. The tough odds in this industry are the real problem for excellent artists.