“Music rights holders handing over YouTube claiming rights to their distributors hoping for the best, generally are missing a large part of their online video income,” says AdRev President Noah Becker. He should know. AdRev has paid out over $100 million to their roster of publishers and TV/film production libraries since it was founded in 2011. The company represents music rights found in over 320 million videos on YouTube.
“We recognize YouTube’s innate ability to drive revenue, audience, analytics, and marketing. Understanding this, we have built a team of 30 dedicated staff members, that live and breathe all things YouTube. The team all have a firm, foundational understanding of music rights and intricacies. Couple that team with a variety of in-house proprietary tech and joint ventures with other leading technologists in the space, and we’re consistently able to drive revenue upwards of 100% within the first 6 months for newly onboarded clients” explains Becker.
Becker continues, “It requires a combination of technical knowledge on the nuances of YouTube’s robust Content ID system – a layer of incredible technology to help rights owners and admins with optics on music uses and video analytics – and diligent humans with musical knowledge. I caution anyone receiving a pitch from any rights administrator about their fully automated system. Automation is great, but it can’t pick up a phone and work out a pending copyright dispute with another administrator, or identify a cover version of a song that is off tempo from the original and in a different scale, or you know…woefully out of key. ”
By starting in the production music library side of the business, AdRev are experts in demystifying and actioning on complex rights uses. “We got our start working with a great deal of the production music libraries in the States and beyond, giving us the advantage of getting to cut our teeth on all facets of YouTube’s Content ID system – sound recordings, publishing assets, and music videos / A/V assets. Understanding the various asset types and how they monetize and interact inside YouTube’s system helps us keep clients’ rights fully optimized on the platform.”
“We are proud to partner with AdRev in the worldwide claiming rights of our music assets,” says Henry Alonzo, CEO of Adarga Entertainment Group. “Their infrastructure and expertise of the industry has helped us correctly protect and monetize copyrighted content for the artists that we manage. We’ve seen exponential growth in our YouTube income since migrating to their platform.”
While others are waiting to monetize user-generated videos posted on other social media networks, AdRev has already seen a leap by monitoring things like Instagram videos getting re-posted to YouTube. “We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” says AdRev’s VP of Content Strategy Matt Whitmire, “Content from other platforms is often re-posted in almost near real-time to YouTube – getting those unlicensed re-posts claimed expeditiously is one of the key factors in driving revenue and adding value for our clients.”
While Facebook is starting to roll out deals with the Majors, AdRev execs are looking forward to helping Facebook administer rights management and royalty payouts for their extensive roster of clients. “We know from our experience with YouTube that it’s critical for these large-scale platforms to stay focused on what they do best, inspiring vast amounts of user-generated content to support their advertising businesses, and creating new revenue streams for creators,” Becker reflects. “We’re excited to see this grow as we continue to help solve the challenges of rights management in the UGC era.”