AFEM (the Association For Electronic Music) and SonicData today announced a joint programme to enable all electronic music rightsholder members of AFEM to use the latest SonicKey digital watermark technology, with real-time monitoring, live broadcast and data collection for 300 specialist broadcasters across the world.

The agreement provides free access to the SonicKey platform as part of AFEM’s ‘Get Played Get Paid’ initiative – advocating for payment for every play for all electronic music creators and rightsholders.

The programme for all new music will deliver 100 percent accurate tracking, reporting and data collection of all plays across broadcast radio without charge as part of both organisation’s commitment to ‘pay for every play’ for all rights holders and artists. 

AFEM members will benefit from six months of worldwide tracking and reporting of all new music plays. 

The initiative will be available to all AFEM rights holder members including labels, publishers and  distributors. Those companies joining the programme will each be allocated a Sonic Dashboard licence, allowing real-time access to live data of all radio plays, encoding of all new music with SonicKeys, MetaData set up and integration. 

AFEM General Manager Greg Marshall said:  “It is great to see this innovative new audio-watermarking, music usage tracking and data reporting company provide AFEM’s members with free access to its services to deliver real-time radio broadcast tracking for new releases. This is real transparency and empowerment for creators and rightsholders to inform expectations on royalty payments, facilitate planning, marketing and touring decisions based on radio broadcast intel. The offer from SonicData provides a tremendous opportunity for our members to use the SonicKey technology for six months across multiple territories.”

A digital system based on tracking a SonicKey directly through the Sonic StreamReader changes the model, enabling efficiencies and a transition to automated collection. SonicData’s platform enables every piece of music to be uniquely tracked, reported and monetised on any platform against a single version of the truth (SVOT) metadata record, to address the music industry’s decades-long black box problem of  inaccurate allocation of unidentified royalties.

AFEM members will be able to encode and track any music released during the programme.  It also provides those members who engage  future proofing opportunities for their music to  be monitored and reported with complete accuracy for the in-venue,  social media and video sharing sites covered by Sonic Data. 

SonicData Chairman Kelly Sumner said: “Our commitment to artists and rights holders, payment for every play, transparency and empowerment is at the core of our business. By supporting AFEM and its members with a programme to benefit all music released for a period of six months with free broadcasting monitoring across 300 stations relevant specialist dance stations, we enable rights holders and artists to understand first hand the power of accurate realtime data for every version, edit, mix and distributed copy of their work.”

The AFEM SonicKey programme will become available in early 2022. The AFEM has over 250 member companies over 25 countries. Rights holder members will be able to encode as much music as they require. 

Live data of plays across 300 global radio stations will run for six months. AFEM rights holder members can register for the Programme through www.sonicdata.com/afem 

For further information please contact:

AFEM Press Contact
Neil Bainbridge
Neighbourhood PR
Tel: +44 7870657468
neil@neighbourhoodpr.com

SonicData
Simon Harvey
CMO
simon@sonicdata.com
Tel: +44 7860 401882

About AFEM (Association for Electronic Music)

AFEM is a global voice for the electronic music industry, representing community, culture and commerce. AFEM’s membership spans industry sectors from Labels to Live, Managers to Media, Retail to Rightsholders, Technology to Talent Agencies. AFEM is made up of over 250 company members across 25 countries ranging from industry leaders such as Beatport, Boiler Room, Defected, CAA, FUGA, !K7, Mixcloud, Mixmag, Pioneer DJ, Soundcloud, Traxsource, WME through to emerging start-ups, leading managers, promoters, publishers and many others. AFEM connects its worldwide membership to develop opportunities and enable change.

www.associationforelectronicmusic.org

About SonicData and SonicKey

SonicData’s mission is to enable, understand and track all the world’s music and audio content from creation to consumption. SonicData’s patented technology is an algorithm that adapts to any sound, identifying and understanding its frequency and harmony. This means that the SonicKey becomes part of the underlying sound of any music or content in which it is encoded.  It works with any and all sound and is 100 percent accurate with mixed audio and voice over. It can be integrated easily alongside existing technologies currently in use. It is Identifiable within  seconds and is compatible with over 80 industry audio and video file formats. It is extensively tested DA/AD conversion, file format conversion and post production. SonicKey can operate in both hardware and software. The SonicKey enables all music to be uniquely identifiable, referenceable and trackable with 100 percent accuracy to any version, stream, edit, cut, language, performance or distributed copy across broadcast, social media, video sharing and in-venue use. Because it was designed to work with streaming platforms, It is fast and performant and through SonicData’s cloud based solutions can encode millions of songs in just a few hours.