In the Press

The UK music industry is worth an estimated £4.5 billion and with recorded music revenues up by over 20% in the last three years, it is showing no signs of slowing down. Increased innovation is one factor contributing to this growth.

Whilst advances in music streaming have enabled more people to access their favourite music at the touch of a button, many still argue that these advancements, unfortunately, contribute to a rise in issues such as music piracy and ‘stream-ripping’, which threaten to jeopardise finances of struggling creatives around the world.

Performing rights organizations (PROs)  are entrusted with a difficult task: getting businesses to pay to use music, and distributing royalties fairly to songwriters, composers and music publishers.

PROs haven’t yet tried to track every song played in the thousands of businesses that hold music licenses — restaurants, stores, gyms and more. Out of economic necessity, they have used various ways of estimating which songs businesses use as background music, and how often.

In times of great turbulence and anxiety, we can be tempted to cast our gaze warmly at the days that are a safe distance away in the past.

Who can blame us?

The future can often be presented as a scary place and the present is doing its best to test our nerve. Bombarded as we are, it’s perfectly natural we’d retreat. Our current destination of choice seems to be the 90s.

New London start-up hopes to use its first invention and cloud-based tech to recover billions in lost royalties. Musicians struggling to make a financial success of the streaming revolution could also be losing out on $3.2 billion per year in unpaid royalties.

Audoo, a technology start-up aimed to revolutionise music royalty distribution has announced £600k in funding in a bid to improve the monitoring of music played in commercial spaces and ensure artists are paid accurately.

Music royalties start-up Audoo has secured Nigel Elderton, the chairman of PRS for Music, to its advisory board. Audoo offers tech to better monitor the broadcast of music in public spaces. The technology can be used by the likes of PRS for Music, which licenses music usage and collects royalties on artist’s behalf.

Audoo has already raised £600,000 for music smart meter that enables collection agencies to accurately calculate royalties for songwriters and musicians. Audoo, a tech start-up developing a smart meter which monitors music being played in commercial premises, is raising £1.2m to fund expansion.

Abbey Road Red recently announced the two exciting new start-ups (Audoo & MyPart) joining our Music Tech Incubator Programme. To provide a chance for readers to learn more about Audoo, we caught up with Founder & CEO, Ryan Edwards, to ask him some questions around the company’s vision, the inspiration behind the vision and the fantastic team they have assembled – read on to find out more.

UK-based music technology start-up Audoo has joined Abbey Road’s tech start-up incubator Abbey Road Red.

Audoo’s addition to the incubator follows last month’s news that music manager and Spice Girls creator Chris Herbert and music industry heavyweight Rick Riccobono, have joined Audoo’s advisory board.

With the introduction of digital downloads followed by the advent of streaming, disruptive technologies have impacted the music industry more than most. Audoo CEO Ryan Edwards tells Sam Forsdick how his tech start-up is looking to further disrupt the sector by targeting its outdated and often arbitrary process of collecting and paying royalties owed to musicians.

Music technology start-up Audoo which focuses on royalty distribution has added two biz experts to its advisory board.

Music manager Chris Herbert, who helped create the Spice Girls, and music publishing and digital rights executive Rick Riccobono have joined the firm which “seeks to revolutionise the fair distribution of music royalties through technology which accurately monitors the music played in commercial spaces.”

Audoo is aiming to revolutionise the fair distribution of music royalties through leveraging music recognition technology to be able to accurately monitor the music played in commercial spaces.

The music industry generates some £35 billion globally, but artists are currently only paid 12% of the revenue generated. The prevalence of missing royalties plays a significant part in this.

This week’s Meet the CEO guest is Ryan Edwards, CEO of tech and music startup Audoo.  Ryan was formerly a musician who was not paid royalties when he heard his music being played in public and spotted a big gap and opportunity for musicians and royalties. Audoo is a plug-in device that listens & captures audio was created in 2018 and is free for SMEs, and in this interview Ryan discusses the challenges of becoming a CEO as well as his vision for the future of the business.

Historically, the relationship between technology and the music industry has been a complex one.

On one hand, the UK music scene is one of the most lucrative in the world, contributing over £4.5bn to the British economy in 2017. This was thanks, in-part, to the wider conversion towards music streaming. However, the rise of these platforms has also contributed to a rise in issues such as piracy, threatening the finances of struggling creatives across the globe.

In the latest edition of Music Week, we deliver a special report looking at the royalty collections business. And, thanks to the explosion in streaming consumption, business is very much booming in 2019.

As part of the feature, we spoke to a host of major players in the sector, such as Songtrust, MRC, Sony/ATV, Audoo, PPL, ASCAP, Sentric, Soundlounge and CC Young & Co about how the arrival of new platforms has led to a technological revolution sweeping the sector.

Regardless of who’s getting the money, it is undeniable that streaming has made the music industry lucrative again. Now, as the business works to reinvent itself, are historically downtrodden artists finally coming out on top, or are record labels and management siphoning off all of the profits?

One minute you’re on stage playing your songs to 50,000 fans, partying with The Killers and rubbing shoulders with your idols. A few weeks later you’re knocking on shop doors in the rain begging for a job, breathing a sigh of relief when the manager of Carphone Warehouse invites you in for a trial. That’s life – and that’s how life was for Ryan Edwards.