BMG sets up boutique unit to collect neighbouring rights

By Emmanuel Legrand

Bertelsmann-owned music company BMG is broadening its services to artists by creating a boutique neighbouring rights unit with British DJ and producer Jonas Blue and The Who founding member and frontman Roger Daltrey as the first clients. 

  BMG said that after it collected its own label share of neighbouring rights since its creation in 2008, it is now in the position to offer the same service to recording artists. The new unit will be led by VP Operations Strategy David Miller, whose team will be responsible for ensuring each artist’s repertoire is registered accurately with collective management organisations (CMOs) in around 40 countries worldwide, tracking international income and ensuring faster royalty pay-through.

  “There are some really great national performing rights agencies, but international performance is highly variable,” said Miller. “The best analogy is probably music publishing. Collection societies provide the backbone of collections, but publishers still add significant value.”

A growing market

  Neighbouring rights are the performance rights attached to recordings, usually paid by radio stations, TV channels and public spaces using music for the use of recordings. In the US, neighbouring rights are only collected from non-interactive platforms such as Pandora or SiriusXM.

  According to BMG, global music neighbouring rights payments have reached $2.7bn last year and have grown by an average of 7% a year over the past five years. 

   “We’re thrilled to partner with the team at BMG for the next phase of my neighbouring rights collection," said Jonas Blue. "They have shown a considerable depth of understanding in this field, and I’m absolutely confident they will use their absolute best endeavours to be the best most efficient and pro-active team to handle this important side of our global business.” 

  The deal with Roger Daltrey means BMG now represents his interests when his work is performed, including works from The Who as well as his own solo work.

  The move into managing neighbouring rights comes just four months after BMG moved into artist management in a partnership with Carl Stubner’s Shelter Music Group. “Neighboring rights brings to seven the number of distinct services BMG now offers to artists, alongside music publishing, recordings, production music, film, books, and management," said BMG COO Ben Katovsky.