Siae-Meta war, what Soundreef is up to
The ice remains between Meta and Siae (the latter accuses the platform of having imposed an ultimatum), but in the meantime Soundreef restores its songs (and blames the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers)
Italian music is back (and not only) on Meta's social networks, i.e. Facebook and Instagram, after the breakdown of negotiations with Siae: not all, only a part that is by no means exhaustive compared to what our singers have given to the world, which in the Soundreef catalogue, but almost certainly the most pop and loved by the very young: Laura Pausini, J-Ax, Fabio Rovazzi, Gigi d'Alessio, Rkomi, Ultimo, Fabrizio Moro, Paola Turci, Morgan, Nesli and Sfera Ebbasta. A total of 43,000 artists, about half of them Italian.
THE WORK OF SOUNDREEF
That Soundreef after the clash between Siae and Meta which had silenced all posts, stories and reels with Italian songs on Facebook and Instagram was at work to restore at least those to which it has the rights, it was understood from the note published before handing over to the press silence: “Given the exceptional gravity of this unprecedented event, Soundreef – which bills itself as the most advanced and efficient music copyright management company in Europe, providing high-quality background music for businesses, recovering and sharing the royalties on behalf of authors, composers, publishers and labels for their use – is directly contacting both parties to understand how the entire negotiation was conducted and working to restore on the Meta platforms all the songs of which he fully administers the rights".
“TENSE BARGAINING WITH ALL PLATFORMS”
Press silence was interrupted by Davide d'Atri , who founded the company in 2011 with Francesco Danieli , speaking to Repubblica : «The music industry must make a common front, Siae has the right to refuse the conditions proposed to its members, but one must realize that the decision has an impact on non-members and on the whole sector".
"Bargaining is tense with all platforms," said the manager, "it may happen that they try to impose a package, but in our experience and that of other European rights societies, it is possible to negotiate, the platforms withdraw and concede". In short, for Soundreef it seems that the culprit is Siae who would have abandoned the negotiation with Meta.
SOUNDREEF BLAMES SIAE FOR BREAK UP WITH META
"To say that the negotiation on the data failed seems hypocritical to me", Davide d'Atri added, "we need to go into detail and understand what Siae asked for", which however comments: "The competition between the companies that manage the rights has brought advantages to authors and publishers, in the quality of the service and in the size of the market. Dealing alone, moreover, is a choice of SIAE: in Europe more companies come together».
THE VERSION OF SIAE
But Siae is not about to take responsibility for having abandoned the table where Meta sat, before the Soundreef catalog was restored the general manager Matteo Fedeli told Open : «The license had expired in December 2022, and the negotiations were in last quarter of 2022, in order to be able to give continuity to the previous license», explaining that they were the first surprised by the precipitation of events: «We were left with a press release from Meta that arrived last Thursday in which they told us that they were about to remove all content from their platforms. With that action, the negotiations we were carrying on were effectively interrupted».
THE META-ULTIMATUM
In detail, the dg Siae explained that a real ultimatum would arrive: «In the negotiation moments of stalemate can happen, but substantially during the last negotiation the company made a "take it or leave it" offer: either you take this money or I remove all content from the platforms. And so it was, without any warning, neither to us, nor towards the artists, much less the record companies and the users of the platform themselves ».
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia-on-demand/guerra-siae-meta-cosa-combina-soundreef/ on Tue, 28 Mar 2023 09:10:12 +0000.