The deal, which was executed November 1 and made public today, brings the first pan-European hub for the licensing of online services, Armonia is made up of groups from France, Italy, and Spain (SACEM, SIAE, and SGAE), and includes music from Sony Latin, Universal Music Publishing’s British and American repertoire, and more.
“We are thrilled to have reached an agreement with the Armonia societies,” Sami Valkonen, head of licensing at Google, said in a statement (PDF link). “Licenses such as this are important in ensuring that artists and rights holders are rewarded fairly for their creative endeavors, and digital service providers are able to bring innovative services to market for the benefit of European consumers.”
Elaborating further on the deal, Catherine Kerr-Vignale of France’ SACEM said, “this is an extensive licensing deal of its kind. Royalties that will be distributed by Google to publishers and artists will be on the same level as those paid by rivals Amazon and Apple,” reports said.
Google Play Store Music Europe
More importantly, Armonia is described as ‘an initiative from SACEM, SGAE and SIAE to facilitate the pan-European licensing by offering a single point of entry for the use of repertoires that they represent, in line with the objectives of transparency and efficiency of the recent draft Directive of the European Commission.”
“Armonia is a welcome development in the ongoing reform of pan-territorial licensing in Europe in helping simplify and speed-up the music-licensing process,” Valkonen said, “which is crucial in fostering ongoing rapid innovation by digital music service providers.”
On the other hand, for Google, the new alliance means the addition of 5.5 million songs to its ever expanding Google Play music library is vital as the company continues to try to add critical mass to its content offerings for customers. Besides, this move also puts the company more in line with competitors Apple and Amazon who already address an international market with a wide selection of artists, so Google is apparently continuing to make serious strides to get the attention and purchasing dollars of device owners when they buy new music.
Furthermore, the availability of music in Google Play is actually a new concept in Europe, where the search engine giant just added the option last week. Users in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are now able to purchase music from the store and add up to 20,000 songs from an existing collection to the cloud, for free.
“This will all be for free,” Google said. “Free storage of your music, free matching, free syncing across your devices and free listening.”