Amra is disrupting the world of global royalty collections – with big plans for what's next.
Aug 9, 2024
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Tomas Ericsson, CEO of Amra and former Deputy CEO of STIM, discusses the evolution of global royalty collections. He highlights Amra's rapid growth, generating over $110 million in revenue and its strategic shift to digital platforms. The conversation includes the importance of transparency in royalty distributions and Amra's commitment to impartiality despite its Kobalt affiliation. Ericsson debates the effectiveness of for-profit versus non-profit PROs, emphasizing service efficiency while tackling the challenges of ownership transitions and data management in the music rights landscape.
Amra's innovative approach to royalty collection, leveraging direct licensing with DSPs, enhances transparency and efficiency for songwriters.
The substantial investment in technology by Amra is aimed at maximizing digital royalty collections, particularly benefiting independent publishers and lesser-known tracks.
Deep dives
The Unique Role of AMRA in Royalty Collection
AMRA operates as a digital collection society that uniquely differentiates itself from traditional performance rights organizations (PROs) by directly licensing digital service providers (DSPs) across over 200 territories. Unlike traditional PROs that rely on reciprocal agreements for offline earnings, AMRA independently collects both data and royalties for digital streams. This shift reflects the growing trend toward digital consumption, which AMRA anticipated when it was founded in 2014. Currently, digital revenues represent about 65-70% of royalties collected, a figure expected to rise to 80-85% in the next few years.
Challenges Faced by PROs in the Digital Age
As digital royalties become a larger portion of total earnings, incumbent PROs face significant challenges adapting their business models. Traditional PROs often incur high administrative costs associated with processing offline collections, which may impede their ability to transition to a more digital-centric model. The continued reliance on reciprocal agreements can result in delays and a lack of transparency for songwriters regarding their earnings. Switching to a more efficient digital collection strategy could alleviate these issues and provide songwriters with clearer visibility on their royalties.
Technological Investments and Future Growth Opportunities
AMRA has invested over $50 million in technology to enhance its capability in processing digital royalties, significantly improving efficiency and accuracy. This technological advancement allows AMRA to match data from billions of usage records worldwide, including lesser-known tracks, thereby maximizing royalty collections for its clients. As the music landscape evolves, AMRA aims to attract more independent publishers and potentially major music catalogs by showcasing the effectiveness of its systems. This approach is crucial for the long-tail segment, where many songwriters can find substantial income that has previously gone uncollected.
On the latest Music Business Worldwide Podcast, Tim Ingham, founder of MBW, is joined by the CEO of Amra, Tomas Ericsson (pictured).
Amra is a global digital collection society that happens to be owned by Kobalt Music Group.
Since Kobalt acquired and relaunched Amra in 2015, the collection society has become a fast-growing business in its own right: in the 12 months to the end of June 2022 – the last year for which public financial information is available – Amra generated over USD $110 million in revenue.
Amra's clients today include Kobalt's global publishing business, plus other significant independent music publishers, including Anthem Entertainment and Armada Music Publishing.
Prior to joining Amra and Kobalt, Tomas Ericsson was Deputy CEO of Swedish collection society STIM, and he was the Managing Director of ICE until 2009. (At that time, ICE was a joint venture between STIM and the UK's PRS For Music; it would later welcome Germany's GEMA as a third stakeholder.)
On this podcast, Ingham asks Ericsson about the changing landscape for songwriter royalty collection, the opportunity ahead – and the fact that Amra has, to date, invested more than $50 million upgrading and expanding its core technology...
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