Audible Magic Acquires MediaNet from SOCAN, Integrating UGC and Premium Music Solutions

Monday, January 11, 2021

Toronto and Los Gatos, Calif., Jan. 11, 2021 – Audible Magic and SOCAN announced the companies have entered into an agreement to transfer SOCAN’s content fulfillment and rights administration business of MediaNet to Audible Magic. Audible Magic is the leading provider of identification and compliance solutions to social networks hosting user-generated content (UGC). SOCAN is the Canadian performing rights organization. MediaNet has a long history of delivering turnkey white label digital music solutions for Internet radio, subscription music services, on-demand streaming, and support for fitness and gaming applications. With this acquisition, Audible Magic can now provide digital platforms a comprehensive range of services to enable and manage the use of music.

Audible Magic provides solutions for music licensing, content identification, and rights management to social media platforms. This acquisition extends its capabilities to deliver bespoke licensing from hundreds of labels and publishers, media files for more than 92-million tracks, full rights management, and royalty and payment administration. This portfolio of services will enable social platforms to exploit the opportunity more easily for both music in UGC and premium content. According to a recent Midia Research report, “The Rising Power of UGC,” there is a projected US$6-billion opportunity in the appropriate use of audio and video for streaming of music in UGC alone.

“Rightsholders and platforms will both benefit from our combined solution and will reduce the time and complexity of managing and paying for the use of music,” said Vance Ikezoye, Audible Magic chief executive officer. “We see significant upside in enabling incremental revenues for the music ecosystem.”

SOCAN and Audible Magic also announced they have entered a strategic partnership with the goal to use Audible Magic technology and services to help SOCAN improve operational accuracy and reporting to publishers and songwriters.

“The acquisition of the MediaNet services by Audible Magic creates long-term benefits for SOCAN’s members and clients,” said Jennifer Brown, Interim CEO of SOCAN. “Audible Magic is a knowledgeable and skilled company and we’re looking forward to working together to improve the accuracy of reporting and to publishers and songwriters.”

SOCAN acquired Seattle-based MediaNet in 2016. By legal agreement, terms of Audible Magic’s acquisition are confidential.

About Audible Magic

For more than 20 years, Audible Magic has innovated solutions to identify content, manage rights, and monetize media. Audible Magic’s Emmy-winning automatic content recognition (ACR) technology powers billions of monthly transactions. The Silicon Valley pioneer is the trusted intermediary between major platforms and rightsholders (including labels, studios, distributors, publishers, and collectives). The company works with a wide range of platforms and rights holders, including Facebook, Twitch, SoundCloud, Dailymotion, ShareChat, Vimeo, NBC Universal, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, CDBaby, and Distrokid. For more information: www.audiblemagic.com