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Digital
PRS licences Amazon’s locker in Europe
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 2 October 2012
PRS For Music has signed a licensing agreement with Amazon’s digital locker service, the Cloud Player, it has been confirmed.
As previously reported, the Amazon locker launched in the UK, France and Germany last month, having gone live in the US last year. It enables users to store their entire MP3 collection on Amazon’s servers, allowing them to access content from any net-connected device.
Although the initial Amazon locker in the US was not licensed by the music companies, the addition of so called ‘scan-and-match’ earlier this year, meaning that the Amazon system will scan a user’s machine and automatically give them cloud access to any tracks already in the retailer’s digital catalogues (saving them the hassle of uploading those tracks), necessitated licences from the music firms.
Amazon already has deals with each of the major record companies for its enhanced locker service, and the PRS For Music licence will cover music publishing rights for all the songwriters and publishers the collecting society represents. The PRS deal is a pan-European licence, meaning it will cover the Amazon locker service in other European countries for repertoire the society represents on a multi-territory basis.
Confirming the Amazon deal, PRS boss Robert Ashcroft told CMU: “We issued our first licence for a cloud music service in 2010 and have been licensing digital services for over a decade. Technology is allowing consumers in the UK and across Europe to discover music in new ways, while also providing new income sources for the creators we represent. Amazon’s fourteen year success story in the UK demonstrates that it is in this country where technology and content combine so successfully for the benefit of users and creators alike”.
