It might be the end of the average work week for most but, after today ends, this weekend signifies just the start of something both hectic and helpful in the worlds of music and business. Midem 2013 kicks off tomorrow, January 26, in Cannes, France and runs nearly non-stop until next Tuesday, January 29. This B2B-centric, multi-faceted event covers almost any area of the music business one can think of and features a highly anticipated assortment of participants every year – from CEOs to artists and inventors to marketers.
It comes as no surprise when talk starts circulating, no matter how early on, about companies deciding to collaborate to enhance each other’s resources and jointly achieve new levels of innovation. This is precisely what has brought together royalty and rights software leader, Counterpoint Systems and the emotion-driven music player/analysis system, Moodagent. Only yesterday, the new business relationship was announced in a press release (though a primary announcement and reveal will take place when Midem begins), and the two companies will be working together mainly for the benefit of the professional client segment, as opposed to energy being honed in on the consumer demographic.
Counterpoint Systems and Moodagent each fill in an ability the other lacks or never intensely used before. Counterpoint Systems heavily advocates its “Music Source Online Solution” as an easy and effective way for people to browse large catalogs of others’ music with high efficiency. This is because of the wide range of search criteria choices at a user’s disposal when designing their own version of the interface. However, as customizable as this tool is, Amos Biegun, CEO of Counterpoint Systems, explains that setup and ongoing adjustment of data leaves things in a less than ideal state, alleviated in part by giving music companies metadata tagging abilities:
The biggest challenge our customers face is filling their systems with the appropriate and accurate data required to promote their music and this can be time consuming. Moodagent makes this an automated and seamless process, leaving our clients the time and resources to do what they do best – generating sync and licensing opportunities
Aside from bringing in time-saving and data accuracy elements, where Moodagent also steps in, is from a more intuitive vantage point. How a song fits the intended setting of an ad or other non-auditory source, can often be the deciding factor in how one piece of music gets deemed best for a sync opportunity over another. Moodagent helps to center the more abstract part of a user’s discernment process, as Moodagent’s CEO, Peter Berg Steffenson points out:
Counterpoint’s excellence is unrivaled and the integration of Moodagent to provide emotional and sounds-like discovery on top of automatic listening samples and meta-data enrichment is further proof of Counterpoint’s strong commitment to their clients in sync and licensing.
Just as Moodagent’s technology is described as something “born out of the marriage of state-of-the-art digital signal processing, artificial intelligence and human musicology,” the union of itself and Counterpoint Systems connects an established manager of raw, factual data with an analysis leader who simultaneously advocates for acknowledgment of the spontaneous human variable that breeds the music both need to do business.
Interactive demonstrations for tech from both companies will be available at Midem.
Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1
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