Royalty collection platform Songtrust has announced an agreement with pan-European licensing hub, ICE Services Ltd.
The deal, signed with Songtrust's parent company, Downtown, will see ICE will provide a range of digital licensing and royalty processing services for a client base of more than 100,000 songwriters and 11,000 publishers.
Downtown's deal makes Songtrust the first royalty administration platform to strike a deal with ICE, and their agreement will directly benefit the songwriters and music publishers who use the platform to collectively manage over 1 million song copyrights.
Joe Conyers, co-founder and General Manager of Songtrust, said: "Continuously refining our platform and process to provide our clients with the fastest, most efficient royalty collection solution in the market is core to our vision. Finding a business partner capable of managing the enormous scale and volume of our platform is no easy task. While many vendors are actively working on solutions, the ICE offering is by far and away the most compelling and sophisticated offering in the marketplace today."
Roberto Neri, managing director of Downtown's London office, added: "We've been looking at shaping the digital market from the outset. This direct relationship with the ICE Core allows us to eliminate parallel processing through other incompatible society works databases. This will result in quicker, more efficient and accurate digital royalty distribution across the Songtrust platform and extended to its fast-growing songwriter and publisher client base."
Ben McEwen, commercial director at ICE said: "We are clearly delighted that an increasingly important, progressive, and technologically capable publisher such as Downtown and Songtrust has chosen to include its repertoire within ICE's Core license and is willing to demonstrate their confidence and appreciation of our administration capabilities in this way. We are very excited about working together in this new collaboration."
The new deal comes after Songtrust recently expanded its operations into Europe. Its Business Services division provides bespoke solutions for companies including CD Baby, Distrokid, Downtown Music Publishing, The Orchard, Sub Pop Publishing, and Trap Nation.