Music Publishing News Roundup: iTunes Radio, ole, Songfile & More

Apple’s iTunes Radio will be launching in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Nordic countries as soon as early next year. Its largest competitor, Pandora, still isn’t available in Europe, despite launching over a decade ago. iTunes Radio has negotiated direct deals with both labels and publishers while Pandora is waits for its Dec. 4 rate trial.

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Rights management company ole has taken out $135 million in debt capital from various banks. It’s assumed that the company will spend this new capital to finance further acquisitions of media rights in addition to its current catalog of 45,000 songs and 60,000 hours of TV and film.
Bandzoogle’s Dave Cool and HFA’s Dalita Keumurian teamed up for this great Q&A about Songfile®. Songfile is HFA’s online licensing tool for DIY songwriters that want to record and release covers.
The estates of Badfinger songwriters Pete Ham and Thom Evans have signed exclusive deals with Kobalt. The deal came less than two weeks after their song “Baby Blue” closed out the finale of AMC’s Breaking Bad and sold 37,000 copies the following week.
Tomas Ericsson has joined Kobalt as President of Society Relations. Ericsson was formerly deputy CEO of the Swedish performing rights organization, STIM.