Having identifying that dance festivals are currently the industry's biggest cash cows, music copyright collection agency APRA have trialled new music recognition technology at festivals – which they're now rolling out into nightclubs.
Speaking at MusicNSW's Music Publishing workshop last night, Mushroom Music Publishing's Managing Director Ian James – also Deputy Chairman of APRA and Chairman of AMCOS – said that the technology is a major advance in their distribution.
“What we're trialling is the use of music recognition technology in nightclubs,” he said. “It started out with dance festivals. The dance festivals are now the most lucrative festivals in Australia, Stereosonic has 60,000 people in one day – serious money. And of course every piece of music sounds vaguely similar to the rest, and therefore sending a member of staff along with a pencil and piece of paper is ridiculous.”
The technology, sourced from Holland, was brought in “specifically for the dance festivals and have now rolled it out into the venues. On site I think there's about 20 venues that have this installed, and it turns itself on automatically.”
James added, “Of course this is not just about dance music, in the great Panthers Leagues clubs of the world there's Cold Chisel… so [this] is a proper step forward because that will bring proper distribution to the sound recordings as well as the songs. There's a very, very, serious breakthrough there.”
MusicNSW's Indent arm are running the Feedback conference as part of Vivid Ideas.
