Sabam safeguards rights of its authors for AI use | Sabam

Sabam — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 23:00:00 GMT

Sabam has decided to exercise its reservation on text and data mining of its repertoire by AI tools.

With this decision, we, as a authors' society, want to safeguard our members' right to fair remuneration.

In addition, we call on policymakers to move quickly to establish a conclusive regulatory framework that provides more transparency when AI applications use creative works to train their systems.

Read the full press release in Dutch and in French.

new technology and partnership with BMAT | Sabam

Sabam — Mon, 22 May 2023 08:00:00 GMT

Sabam innovates and makes extra efforts to valorise the creations of its members. New partnerships enable us to distribute old reserved amounts to rightful authors and publishers. And by introducing new technology, they now receive their online music rights faster and on a monthly basis. These innovations are bearing fruit. Authors received twice as many online rights in 2022 as the year before. And the ambitions do not stop there. This year, we even want to distribute three times as many of these rights to them.

Data processing increased tenfold

Thanks to our partnership with BMAT Music Innovators, in recent months we were able to distribute additional fees to our members for their music consumed via (inter)national streaming services in the period from 2017 to 2021. Indeed, the collaboration with BMAT enabled us to exponentially scale up the data processing required for this purpose. That increased tenfold as a result, from 200 million matches to a whopping 2 billion!

Commenting on this milestone collaboration, Alex Loscos, CEO of BMAT, said “We are thrilled to join forces with Sabam, a distinguished organisation with a rich legacy in protecting authors' and composors' rights. Our shared values and complementary strengths make this partnership a natural fit, positioning us at the forefront of industry innovation. Together, we are committed to building a music ecosystem that champions creators, ensuring their invaluable contributions are duly recognized and rewarded."

Faster and more distribution through new technology

We are also investing in-house in the development of a brand new technology platform driven from The Cloud. Its first functionalities have already been launched in order to process the large amounts of data we obtain through our collaboration with BMAT more efficiently. Thanks to this new platform, we have recently started distributing our authors' online rights on a monthly basis instead of twice a year. And in the future, this will also allow us to distribute more rights to them faster and more frequently.

Together, we are committed to building a music ecosystem that champions creators, ensuring their invaluable contributions are duly recognized and rewarded. - Alex Loscos

Online rights tripling

So this innovation and cooperation have nothing but positive consequences for Sabam and its members. In 2022, for instance, with a total amount of more than 6 million euros, we already distributed twice as many online rights to authors and publishers compared to the year before. And for this year too, expectations are high. In the first months of 2023, we already distributed as many of these rights as in the full year 2022. Our ambitions by the end of the year? To distribute more than 9 million euros of online rights!

About BMAT Music Innovators

BMAT is the Operating System for the Music Industry. A music innovation company with a mission to index all music usage and ownership data. They help all different companies in the music industry better their data operations to make sure artists get paid for their plays. Every day they deliver 27 billion matches and 80 million identifications to CMOs, publishers, record labels, broadcasters and DSPs globally.

Driven by machine learning and copyright expertise, BMAT’s Music Operating System pumps neutral data and authoritative knowledge to everyone along the chain. Everyone who makes or uses music can plug in to ease operations, increase earnings, and get in sync with everyone else.

Contact press@bmat.com for more information.

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Sabam safeguards rights of its authors for AI use | Sabam

new technology and partnership with BMAT | Sabam