AIM Partners With Muso to Help Indie Artists Sink Pirates

[Len]

The Association of Independent Music, a U.K. trade body representing hundreds of indie labels, artists and start-ups (AIM) has unveiled the full details of its partnership with anti-piracy specialists Muso.

The arrangement, which Music Week first reported at the AGM of the indies’ trade body, will provide rights holder members with access to a free digital piracy protection service. Labels and self-releasing artists will be able to monitor their own content and automatically have pirated and unlicensed material removed from the internet.

The new initiative will be launched at AIM’s Music Connected Conference in London today (April 20).

As well as automatic takedowns, key features of the service include content protection and an online dashboard that will allow content owners to see all piracy protection activity for their content.

Last year Muso’s monitoring found 73.9 billion visits to music piracy websites – a 14.7% increase from 2016 that suggests piracy remains an issue for the industry despite a raft of measures and the growth of legal services.

Andy Chatterley, co-founder and CEO, Muso, said: “The impact on independent music businesses can be particularly hard without a consistent mechanism to remove unlicensed content from the Internet. We are therefore delighted to be partnering with AIM to provide a new free-to-label digital anti-piracy service.”

Paul Pacifico, CEO of AIM, said: “We can all agree that music piracy remains contentious and protection has been a historically difficult area. Muso is at the forefront of digital piracy protection and are experts in the business intelligence insights that can be gleaned from it. This new partnership gives our rights holder members access to a highly sophisticated anti-piracy solution, free at the point of access, and allows them oversight of their online content and piracy activity. 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.”