Indie Music Association Puts Antipiracy Tools in Hands of Members

Even in the era of streaming, piracy remains a major problem for record labels big and small. Now, an association focused on smaller labels is taking steps to helpg those labels to fight back. The Association of Independent Music  (opens in a new tab), a U.K.-based industry group, announced a new member offering that would allow labels to better track both privacy and attempts at content protection. The free tool, offered by the antipiracy firm MUSO, makes it possible to both automatically take down unauthorized music and to track the extent of the issue using an analytics dashboard. “This new partnership gives our rightsholder members access to a highly sophisticated antipiracy solution, free at the point of access, and allows them oversight of their online content and piracy activity,” said AIM CEO Paul Pacifico in a news release  (opens in a new tab). “Pirates steal both money and consumer data with no return for artists. This service will allow AIM members to focus on the very positive relationships between artists and their fans by cutting out the pirates and is a huge win for us all.” MUSO’s own monitoring highlights the sheer scope of the problem. The company reports that there were 73.9 billion visits to piracy websites in 2017, a leap of 14.7 percent from the prior year. “The impact on independent music businesses can be particularly hard without a consistent mechanism to remove unlicensed content from the Internet,” MUSO CEO and cofounder Chatterly said in the news release. “We are therefore delighted to be partnering with AIM to provide a new free-to-label digital antipiracy service.” AIM’s member labels, despite not being considered major labels in the traditional sense, are nonetheless heavy hitters. Among the artists currently represented by an AIM label are Grammy winners Adele, Radiohead, The National, Bon Iver, and Vampire Weekend.

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