Getty Images Launches Premium Music Platform

Media Clearinghouse Strikes Deals With Majors for Ad, TV Placement

Originally posted by Mike Tunnicliffe in Advertising Age 'Songs For Soap'

Published: October 07, 2008

Getty Images, one of the largest creators and distributors of visual content and other digital media in the country, has unveiled Premium Playlist, a music collection that makes popular music available for commercial licensing in movies, TV commercials/advertising, broadcast, online and other new media.

The Premium Playlist music collection will be available through gettyimages.com, where it will benefit from worldwide distribution in more than 100 countries. Premium Playlist will additionally be promoted through Getty Images' 600-strong global licensing, distribution and rights-clearance professionals. Getty Images' team is already experienced in music licensing, managing the Pump Audio library of more than 100,000 music titles by independent artists.

According to Billboard, Craig Peters, VP-multimedia products at Getty Images, said, "We have seen significant growth and success in our Getty Images music product and our Pump Audio collection. Representing premium music content through Premium Playlist is the next step and a natural fit for our business model."

Several music publishers, management companies and record labels, including Cherry Lane Music Publishing, Kobalt Music Group, Koch Records, Lionsgate, Nettwerk, Red Light Management and Warner/Chappell Music, have concluded worldwide, non-exclusive deals with Getty Images. The collection has officially launched with an initial catalog of more than 1,000 songs from such artists as Barenaked Ladies, Smash Mouth, Peter Malick (featuring Norah Jones) and music from Lionsgate properties, including the hit TV shows "Mad Men" and "Weeds," and the movie "3:10 to Yuma," among many others.

Nice move from Getty and another sure sign that music licensing is set to continue to grow at a time when the rest of the music business' revenue appears to be heading south. Now who's going to produce the first brand partnership database that profiles artists, giving brand-relevant information and a one-stop shop for clearing multiple rights? Just off to write the business plan for this ...