As first revealed by Music Week, Concord has signed a deal with pan-European licensing body ICE.
Back in March, we broke the news that the independent publisher’s rights would be taken out of IMPEL, which was part of the MPA Group and has since launched as an independent entity.
Now ICE has issued a full confirmation of the deal with Concord, which has joined Downtown and Peermusic in the move from IMPEL to the licensing JV set up by PRS, STIM and GEMA. As part of the direct agreement, ICE will provide a range of multi-territorial digital licensing and online copyright processing for Concord, covering their catalogue of over 380,000 works.
”We have known the ICE team from the beginning in 2012 and love this idea of a direct and simple arrangement with them,” said John Minch, Concord Music’s president of publishing for Europe. “It means we can be on top of and monitor all the major deals with DSPs while getting a much quicker, cost-effective and more efficient pay through. This is a great deal for Concord writers and composers.”
Concord’s roster includes Mark Ronson, Steve Reich, Justin Parker, Sean Lennon, Dolly Parton, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cathy Dennis, who recently praised the publisher in an emotional speech at the Ivor Novello Awards.
Ben McEwen, commercial director at ICE, said: “We are delighted to welcome Concord as a direct customer of ICE. The acquisition of Imagem shows the scale of ambition at Concord to grow and develop the music publishing side of their business. As one of the largest and fastest growing independent music publishers, we look forward to a closer collaboration with Jake, John and the team to continue to drive further growth in online revenues for them as part of the ICE Core licence.”
ICE represents over 290,000 rightsholders for licensing and administration services for online. It has distributed more than €546 million (£484m) back to rightsholders since 2016.
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