ICE has distributed more than €1bn to rightsholders in a consecutive 12-month period for the first time. [1]
It took just under 3½ years to reach the first €1bn in distributions, just over 2 more years to pass the second billion and has been closing in on a single year since. With this distribution milestone passed, ICE has now delivered a total of €4.5bn since its first royalty distributions in 2016.
The rate of royalty distributions to musical creators has exponentially increased with ICE serving more Societies & Publishers and processing and licensing even more DSPs and territories.
At the same time, ICE has delivered consistent improvements to systems and processes which have benefited songwriters, with ICE’s unique Multi-Stage invoicing bringing in over €180 million more in royalties, paid to writers on an accurate musical works usage basis.
On the licensing side it has pioneered innovations like self-serve licensing for start-ups (Licensr), and a DSP audit program to maximise and assure collections for songwriters.
The scale of the ICE hub allows for investments beyond the level a single society could make, reducing duplication and enabling more automation, which is critical in meeting the modern IT infrastructure challenges around connecting songwriters’ remuneration to the digital use of their work.
Peter de Mönnink, CEO, ICE
“Distributing €1bn in 12 months to rightsholders is a major achievement, reflecting the hard work, expertise, and innovation of everyone at ICE in ensuring our customers can deliver to their members.
Despite their crucial role, copyright and music publishing often do not receive the recognition they deserve. Music is the cornerstone of today’s digital services, with customer experiences built around the value of music and the importance of songwriting.
The increasing scale of the ICE Hub is paramount to offer the highest and most efficient distributions for songwriters and composers. It is ICE’s belief that this scale will be evermore important to ensure fair and sustainable royalty flows for rightsholders in the online space. This is not only our mission, but also our passion.
To support our ongoing efforts, and address the complexities of royalty management, ICE has a very strong focus on scalability facilitated by its ongoing platform development. Whilst this innovative undertaking presents significant challenges, we are pleased with the progress we have made. ICE is now moving step by step into deployment phases of this advanced platform.
ICE is on a path of continuous innovation, to deliver more royalties, at less cost, with an even better service.”
Rachael Naylor, Chief Operating Officer, ICE
“We are extremely proud to have delivered more royalties, faster and with optimised accuracy to our customers, which in turn allows increased onward distributions to their Songwriters and Composers, enabling them to continue creating.
ICE are the touchpoint for a significant portion of distributions across a number of exploitation types in the industry, as well as online processing, and we recognize the vital importance of copyright excellence underpinning every service we offer now and in the future.
Our recent customer survey results, with higher ratings across all service areas, evidences ICE’s heightened service performance. This has also been reflected in customers renewing with ICE, increasing the scope of services they take from us and even moving from other service providers.
We do not underestimate the trust placed in us by our customers to deliver critical and reliable royalty services, and are driven to continue to transform internally to achieve the right mix of technical, service and process optimisation all delivered by truly committed and expert teams.”
[1] May 2023-April 2024 inclusive
About ICE
ICE is the music technology company created by rightsholders, for rightsholders.
It delivers accurate and transparent royalties to Songwriters whilst simplifying the process for DSPs, by providing Publishers and Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) with superior Licensing, Processing, and Copyright services.
Representing over 330,000 rightsholders, ICE has processed trillions of online music uses from music streaming services, and paid over €4.5 billion back to rightsholders since March 2016.
The market-leading ICE Core licence includes repertoire* of collection societies PRS, STIM, GEMA, IMRO, BMI, Sabam, AKM and the independent publishers Concord, Songtrust and peermusic and a range of other independent publishers represented through PRS’s Core Collective initiative.
The ICE copyright database holds over 54 million musical works.
ICE is based in the UK, Germany and Sweden.
*In line with industry practice, and depending on the society agreements, certain matching Anglo-American performing rights (e.g. for BMI, IMRO and PRS) may flow outside of this representation and may be covered by other partners.
For press enquiries please contact:
Gary Smith
Head of Marketing
ICE
Tel: +49 171 2643172