ASCAP Picks AudioSoft For DRM Support

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and AudioSoft announced that ASCAP-licensed Web sites soon will employ AudioSoft's digital rights management (DRM) system to track and report music usage over the Internet. According to ASCAP and AudioSoft, the partnership will enable the first comprehensive and fully automated reporting of music usage from Webcasters to ASCAP, thereby helping ensure that songwriters, composers and publishers are appropriately compensated. The partners will work together on a beta implementation with a select number of Webcasters in April 2000, with full deployment on a worldwide basis planned for the second quarter of 2000. Some 1,500 Webcasters currently are licensed with the music performing rights organization, said ASCAP. ""This technology partnership simplifies reporting for our licensees and insures that ASCAP has the highest quality data to distribute Internet fees to our members,"" said John LoFrumento, Chief Executive Officer of ASCAP. ""Our partnership with ASCAP provides an additional building block to support a rapidly growing Webcasting industry,"" said Gary Ludlow, Vice President and General Manager, Americas, AudioSoft. ""It's also great news for rights owners and Webcasters as the benefits of the system that we'll deploy will result in lower overhead on the usage side and improved reporting and payments on the rights owners' side."" The AudioSoft Rights Management System will become generally available to Webcasters in the second quarter of 2000, and AudioSoft plans a progressive rollout nationally and internationally over the course of the following three quarters. The service will initially be available on the RealNetworks G2 platform and will eventually support all platforms. Source: Pro Sound News