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Business News Labels & Publishers
BPI launches new Copyright Protection Portal
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 8 June 2015
Record industry trade group BPI launched a Copyright Protection Portal at Midem this weekend, which it says will help labels, musicians and other music companies see “where illegal copies of their music are being made available illegally online and track how BPI is responding”.
As previously reported, the BPI is one of the most prolific organisations in the world at issuing takedown notices against websites that are hosting or linking to copyright infringing material, and the organisation’s John Hodge explained how the trade body works directly with member labels on this activity at last year’s Great Escape. The new portal will make it easier for artists and rights owners to track what piracy services are distributing their content, and what search engines are linking to infringing music, and how the BPI’s anti-piracy systems are going about removing it all.
Launching the new portal in Cannes, BPI boss Geoff Taylor told reporters: “BPI is absolutely committed to protecting the creativity, hard work and investment of UK musicians and labels. We are the leading force removing illegal copies of British music online and preventing illegal sites from targeting UK fans. This new portal will allow musicians and labels to see how our team is protecting their music on a daily basis. It will help us work together directly with more individual labels and performers and build further on the progress we are making in reducing music piracy levels in the UK”.
The new service is free to use for BPI members, performer members of record industry collecting society PPL and non-BPI affiliated indies which are members of both the Association Of Independent Music and PPL.
Elsewhere in BPI news – but from the department that counts legit sales rather than tracking non-legit music consumption – the trade group has announced it will now include streaming data when calculating what albums have achieved silver, gold and platinum status.
Streams have been counted as part of the equivalent awards for singles since last July, the BPI scheme following the lead of the official chart regarding incorporating streaming stats. So this latest development has seemed likely since it was announced the official albums chart would now include streams back in February.
Streaming data has been applied back to the beginning of the year, meaning a higher number of artists that usual went silver/gold/platinum last week as artists like Nicki Minaj, Placebo and Fall Out Boy enjoyed a stream-based boost to their overall album sales figures.
