BMG has pledged its support for Credits Due, a new campaign by songwriters to ensure they are credited and paid for their work.
It was launched by Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus at The Ivors (September 21). The Ivors Academy has published research that reveals a £500m streaming data gap for royalties.
BMG is the first international music company to commit to the Credits Due campaign. It focuses on ensuring that metadata listing the identity of songwriters and their shares of the songs they write are attached to all recordings at the point of creation.
It requires five types of information, the songwriter’s identity, the song identifier code, recording identifier code, song title and the names of writer, performer, producer and musicians.
BMG’s support for the Credits Due campaign follows artist-friendly reforms including removing so-called packaging deductions on streams, abolishing the controversial controlled composition deduction and paying songwriters on old contracts more speedily than their contract states.
BMG also welcomed the DCMS Committee report on streaming in the summer.
CEO Hartwig Masuch said: “Ensuring its songwriter and artist clients are paid fairly, accurately and speedily should be the priority of every music company. BMG is delighted to lend its support to the Credits Due campaign and applauds the Ivors Academy, the Music Rights Awareness Foundation and SONA (Songwriters of North America) for driving this initiative. We look forward to working with them to deliver their objectives.”
Graham Davies, CEO of The Ivors Academy, said: “Thank you to BMG who understand well that the modernisation of our industry rests on good data. We look forward to working closely with BMG and all those who pledge their support for Credits Due. Together we are stronger.”
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