BMI partners with ICE for pan-European representation

By Emmanuel Legrand

US rights society BMI has been partnering with pan-European licensing hub ICE to license portions of its repertoire to streaming services operating across Europe. ICE is a partnership between the UK's PRS for Music, Germany's GEMA and Sweden's STIM.

  BMI said the reason it is seeking representation in Europe for parts of its repertoire was that while much of its repertoire has been available on a multi-territorial basis to pan-European digital music services for many years, "some works have still been licensed and administered on a territory-by-territory basis by local collection societies."

  The new partnership with ICE makes the remaining musical works available to pan-European digital service providers in one central hub through the ICE Core. BMI said the deal will open up the repertoire to platforms including TikTok and Triller, both of which have recently signed with ICE. 

  “BMI continues to applaud the invaluable work that the local CMOs perform every day for our songwriters, composers and music publishers, and we also appreciate the challenge that digital music services face in securing rights for their services across Europe,” said Ann Sweeney (pictured, above), BMI's SVP, international & global policy. “This new collaboration with ICE helps to meet that challenge by providing an efficient one-stop-shop to the European DSPs and supports our continued effort to serve BMI’s music creators when their creative works are performed digitally in Europe.”

  Ben McEwen, ICE's VP commercial, added: “At this time, it’s more critical than ever that rights-holders have the best online licensing representation, with the expertise and shared resources to really address the market on their behalf, and we believe that ICE can provide that for BMI.”