Listen to this article
* – This article has been archived and is no longer updated by our editorial team –
One Media iP is an ‘intellectual property’ (IP) owner and controller of music and video rights and a B2B and B2C digital content provider, licensing intellectual property rights for music and video. Below is our recent interview with Michael Infante, Chairman and CEO at One Media IP Group:
Q: What does your company do?
A: OMIP exploits its catalogue of over 250,000 music tracks and 10,000 hours of video by re-compiling its content for download, streaming and sublicensing through over 600 territorial digital music and video stores worldwide. The Company delivers digital music and video content through aggregators to over 600 global digital stores including iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google, Deezer, Tidal, Audible and YouTube.
The Company has a catalogue of over 250,000 nostalgic music tracks, from a range of genres spanning soul to classical music and rock to pop and including performances from over 1,700 diverse artists such as George McCrae, Merle Haggard, Ricky Valance, Edwin Starr, Evelyn Thomas, Mungo Jerry, Eric Burdon, the Troggs, Marv Johnson and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The Company looks to exploit its music tracks and over 10,000 hours of video by recompiling the content for sale through digital music and video stores. In addition, its library of content is available for TV shows, movies, adverts and websites requiring synchronised music. The Company acquired the rights to Men & Motors and now exploits over 3,400 shows on YouTube. The Company is looking to rework the format for digital TV broadcast in the future.
OMIP has a team of full-time creative technicians, all of whom are YouTube certified, who digitise the content, create the metadata, re-compile and prepare the digital music and video releases using bespoke in-house developed software. Additionally, Vintner makes its library of content available for TV shows, movies, adverts and websites requiring synchronised music. Vintner focuses on music performed by well-known artists from every genre. Its classical music library of over 10,000 performances includes the Point Classics catalogue comprising some of the most renowned masterpieces by the world’s greatest composers. Vintner owns all the rights to the Men & Motors (originally Granada/ITV) TV shows that were aired on British TV between 1996 and 2010. Comprising over 3,400 shows, Men & Motors is available for viewing on Vintner’s YouTube channel.
Recently OMIP has developed a content discovery and analytical software service, ‘Technical Copyright Analysis Tool’ (“TCAT”), which allows record companies, publishers and law firms to search certain digital stores, such as iTunes, Apple Music and Spotify, and carry out a forensic digital audit on behalf of owners to ensure that their music has not been used without licensing agreements being in place. A major record label and the largest independent music distributor are now using this service.The Group was founded in 2005 by Michael Infante, the Group’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, with a strategy to acquire mixed media content and digitise this media to exploit the shift from physical to digital formats.
Recommended: TikaMobile – An Intuitive CRM Platform, Specifically Designed For The Life Sciences Industry
Q: You have recently raised £6M, could you tell us more about it?
A: OMIP intends that the net proceeds from the Placing and the debt finance circa £9m will be used to acquire music publishing rights, artist recordings and songwriters’ rights. The Company is likely to need to raise further equity capital in the future in order to make further acquisitions once the proceeds of this fundraise have been deployed. The Company is considering a number of potential music IP rights acquisitions, including those that have been introduced by Ninelives. The Directors will adopt a strict criteria in considering acquisitions, in particular that acquisitions will be of music rights with an established historical revenue stream and typically not music written in the last five years. The Directors will, where appropriate, look to acquire music rights that have opportunities to further enhance revenues from exploitation of the rights and/or opportunities from synchronisation usage.
Q: Who is your competition in this space?
A: With regard to the acquisition of music rights, the Directors believe there are a number of parties who are active in the acquisition of music rights, who fall into three broad categories based on a typical acquisition size: We would be considered to be in category 1 initially.
“Small-scale” competitors including independent publishers and operators such as Bucks Music Group, Chelsea Music Publishing, Mojo Music & Media, Notting Hill Music and Silva Screen Records;
“Medium-scale” competitors including DownTown Music Publishing and Music Sales Group Hipgnosis ; and
“Large-scale” competitors including BMG, Concord Bicycle Music, Kobalt Capital, Round Hill, Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
Q: How do you protect your intellectual rights when everything is a copy of a copy of a copy nowadays?
A: TCAT, the Technical Copyright Analysis Tool, is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform developed by OMIP as a means of automating the difficult and time consuming task of monitoring digital music releases, for instances of unauthorised exploitation. The bespoke TCAT software is quick and powerful, capable of scanning legitimate global digital music stores for unauthorised and duplicated releases, and chart information. See www.tcat.media
Recommended: gotomyerp – Fully Managed Cloud Hosting Specializing In QuickBooks, Sage, SAP And All Related 3rd Party Integrations
Q: What are your plans for the next six months?
A: Initially we will examine acquisition targets within the scope of the plan and our funds. We have circa £9m of firepower which is small within our field but we are looking to prove that our model of 12 years can be scaled and will work. Having established a foothold in IP, the new acquisition imitative will add to our existing profitable activities in music and video exploitation. We plan to use our experience in the field and many contacts to consolidate small parcels of IP rights. We will be targeting both music rights and writers of songs with our interesting IP equity release program – but more on this later.
