Canadian Music PRO SOCAN Acquires Jeff Price’s Audiam “to finally fix the global industry problems”

In May, Canadian performing rights organization SOCAN acquired music and metadata delivery technology provider MediaNet. Late yesterday, they added Audiam, a digtal music licensing and royalty collection service, to their music tech portfolio.

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Canadian performing tights organization SOCAN has acquired Audiam. Founded in 2013 by TuneCore founder and former CEO Jeff Price and former TuneCore CTO David Willen, Audiam collects royalties by identifying and tracking music on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music Google Play and other digital services. Terms of the acquisition were not released, but the startup had previously raised $3.56 million in 4 rounds. Audiam will remain a separate organization with Price as CEO.The Audiam acquisition, alongside SOCAN's May purchase of metadata technology provider MediaNet, gives the PRO a comprehensive database of digital sound recordings alongside the technology to match, issue licenses and get rights-holders paid more accurately.

"Finally fix the global industry problems"

Price, who has often been critical of YouTube, Spotify and other music services for not compensating artists fairly, sees the SOCAN deal as a new chapter for rights collection: "Adding SOCAN's resources and knowledge to Audiam allows us to finally fix the global industry problems,remove liability for services and get rights-holders paid." "In 2013, Audiam shook up the music royalties system by identifying and correcting serious gaps in the digital music rights value chain, particularly with music used in YouTube videos, by correctly matching data to the rights-holder," said SOCAN CEO Eric Baptiste. "By acquiring Audiam, SOCAN steps even further ahead with our vision to lead the global transformation of music rights with substantial new tools for our more than 135,000 member songwriters, composers and music publishers, dramatically expanding our ability to ensure that creators are properly and fairly compensated."