SESAC acquires Audiam, sparking criticism from founder Jeff Price

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The Blackstone Groups SESAC officially bought Audiam from Canadian company PRO SOCAN, which itself bought out the royalty collection company half a decade ago. However, Audiam founder Jeff Price has criticized the deal, saying the buyout is designed to allow Blackstones Harry Fox Agency to take control of the only entity that disclosed HFA’s lack of payment to holders of funds. Copyright.

SESAC, which bought out Harry Fox in 2015 and was acquired by investment management firm Blackstone (NYSE: BX) in 2017, today announced the takeover of Audiam in a brief statement. This release does not disclose financial terms of the transactions or ownership details, in addition to noting that SOCAN will retain a minority stake in Audiam. It’s also worth mentioning that SOCAN kicked off 2021 by offloading the B2B digital music platform MediaNet.

This latest investment from SESAC will allow the entity to leverage Audiams’ technology and services for claims, revenue tracking and reporting, extending its global service offerings to songwriters, composers and music publishers, said the press release, Jamie Purpora remaining CEO.

SOCAN CEO Jennifer Brown, who assumed the full-time position earlier this year, following the abrupt resignation of longtime CEO Eric Baptiste in April 2020, and SESAC chief John Josephson, have addressed the purchase in statements.

Josephson, who has led SESAC since 2014, detailed his plans for Audiam, relating: We expect a smooth transition in ownership without disruption of Audiam’s business operations as a result of this transaction.

Going forward, we believe this will position SESAC well for further growth of our multi-rights and multi-territory global rights management business and the continued provision of top-notch service to our affiliates, licensees and partners. commercial, he concluded.

But as initially mentioned, Audiam and Tunecore founder Jeff Price, whose controversial departure from the former company made headlines last July, contacted Digital Music News with a statement about the sale.

By acquiring Audiam, agency Harry Fox is eliminating competition and removing the one entity that exposed HFA’s lack of payments to copyright owners as well as its role in widespread copyright infringement. The sale will also allow HFA’s parent entity to double its publishing revenues while masking a major sleight of hand, said Word Collections founder and CEO Price.

It’s rather ironic but it makes sense. HFA must stop Audiam from doing what she is doing. Through Audiam’s daily audit of HFA and, more recently, MLC, Audiam revealed incorrect payment amounts from HFA, underpayments and / or complete lack of payments to songwriters and publishers. music from all over the world.

Additionally, Audiam has revealed the role of HFAs in massive amounts of copyright infringement. The end result of this work can be seen in HFA sued for counterfeiting and fraud by the Eminem Eight Mile Style publishing catalog and HFA handing over a significant portion of the more than $ 400 million in royalties earned but never paid (some dating back to over decade) to the MLC, only so that HFA wouldn’t pay them anymore, ”Price continued.

With this acquisition, HFA neutralizes the only entity that exhibits its own shares. Additionally, since HFA serves as the back office for the MLC, HFA is paid by the MLC to pay music publishers, while HFA also charges its music publishers to collect their money from the MLC.

Since they want to keep doubling down and taking money from both sides to generate income, they have to move the HFA edition members from HFA and hand them over to Audiam. This creates the view of two different companies, yet they both belong to the same parent entity.

And in a final twist, the switch from MMA, will allow HFA not to pay songwriters and music publishers, their money can instead be taken away from them and given to major music publishers who did not win. these incomes, concluded Price. The latter presumably refers to the minimum three-year holding period for uncompensated royalties to MLC, after which the netting will turn into unclaimed royalties and become eligible for distribution by relative market share.

At the time of this article’s publication, neither SESAC nor SOCAN appeared to have publicly responded to Price’s comments.

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