Artisjus (Hungary) And Sabam (Belgium) Join Armonia, Europe’s First Portal For Licenses For On-Line Music

Artisjus (Hungary) and Sabam (Belgium) have joined Armonia, the biggest portal for international licenses in the world. Armonia was formalized as a European Grouping of Economic Interest on 30 April 2013 by Sacem (France), Sgae (Spain) and Siae (Italy) with the following goals:

* to develop and facilitate on-line music service offerings by providing a one-stop shop for licences for numerous repertoires enabling the decrease of the licensing costs for music users,
* to guarantee the diversity of the works represented within these services.

The recruitment of two new members to Armonia has made its catalogue even more attractive. It now represents 6.5 million works in 32 countries, covering the works of Sacem, Sacem Luxembourg, Sgae, Siae, the repertoire of Spa (Portugal) via SGAE, a bulk of Anglo-American and Latin American works, and now the works of Artisjus and Sabam.

Open to all societies of authors, composers and music publishers in Europe, Armonia aims to expand by signing multinational agreements with on-line services and thus to increase legal options and enhance the protection of authors’ rights in a digital context.

Armonia is the only project of its type to be up and running. It reinforces cultural diversity in Europe and meets the objectives of transparency and efficiency laid out by the European Commission and included in the draft directive on collective management of authors’ rights. Europe’s first portal for licences for on-line services is a veritable symbol of efficient cooperation between collective management societies – to the benefit of authors, composers and music publishers and the advantage of users.

The agreement signed with Google in November and June illustrates the effectiveness of Armonia: it enables its different components – including Google Music Play (Store, Subscription and Locker) – to access the repertoires of Armonia member-societies all over Europe and, for some of the repertoires, in countries in Asia, the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, Africa and the Indian sub-continent.

Source: mi2n.com