From the Les Corts neighborhood in Barcelona, in an old industrial building of 800 square meters, the technology company BMAT works for 4,746 companies worldwide that, thanks to its operating system, control the reproductions of musical pieces on televisions, radio stations, nightclubs or party venues, and on digital platforms, among others, to be able to pay the corresponding copyright royalties to creators and music owners.
The company, created in 2005 as a spin-off of Pompeu Fabra University, is currently one of the main musical monitoring operators, whose database contains 120 million registered musical pieces and allows the daily identification of 27 billion reproductions. This tracking process that they carry out for collective copyright management entities, publishers, record labels, broadcasters, and digital platforms, mainly, reports some 1.777 billion euros (2 billion dollars) each year to creators and music owners.
BMAT's platform, through algorithms, performs a "careful, efficient and transparent management of copyright," explains operations director Jaume Vintró. "The goal is to make the world of music a more efficient place thanks to technology; fairer, so that everyone gets paid; and more transparent," he says.
The work of the 190 people of more than 30 nationalities who work at BMAT ---90 of whom are in Barcelona--- allows monitoring daily the musical pieces played on more than 6,500 channels, including televisions (1,488) and radio stations (5,092), across five continents.
The company's business, which expects to close 2021 with revenues of around 15 million euros (25% higher than in 2020), has grown by incorporating new services, depending on changes in the music sector and industry. "From 2010, the massification of Internet use exponentially increased the volume of reproductions and we adapted," he explains.
In this sense, he states that if in 2010 they realized that platforms like Youtube should be monitored, currently and as a result of the pandemic, the boom of music through social networks has emerged, as a new market niche. "In principle, music being heard through a new channel does not affect us, until rights management companies or record labels close a global agreement to control reproductions," he adds.
The company, currently led by three of its initial co-founders Álex Loscos, Salvador Gurrera, and Pedro Cano, has maintained annual growths of between 20% and 30%, and the year of the pandemic was no exception. Last year, the increase in the consumption of audiovisual content from home compensated for the lack of concerts and the closure of nightclubs and party venues.
BMAT has also grown inorganically since its foundation. The latest operation was the acquisition, for half a million euros, of the US-based Manage Ad Music, headquartered in Washington, which was a BMAT client and with which a vertical integration will now proceed. This incorporation increases the Catalan company's penetration in the world's largest market in terms of music rights and provides knowledge "that we did not have until now in a specialty we want to bet on." The US company acts as an auditor of the sector, certifying that the music creator or owner has correctly received payment for their copyrights.
This purchase was preceded by another acquisition in Japan in 2020. In this case, the absorbed firm DG was dedicated to tracking reproductions on Japanese televisions to provide data to the country's rights management companies and, therefore, for BMAT it has been a secure way to expand the market. BMAT invested 1.6 million euros.
BMAT has acquired the US company Manage Ad Music for half a million eurosIn this constant task of adapting to market needs, Vintró explains that one of the latest developments they have created serves to manage the payment of copyright even more efficiently due to the increase in the volume of buying and selling of rights that is being registered internationally. "We have created a database in which we try to fit and keep up to date the different information that reaches us from the record industry about who is responsible for the treatment of copyright of the same creator in different countries," he specifies.
There is growing interest in buying copyrights, he explains, recalling cases such as Shakira, who has sold the rights to more than a hundred songs—including great hits—to the British company Hipgnosis Songs Funds, a company in charge of managing songs and investing in musical intellectual property. "Because another lesson the pandemic has taught us is that there are certain musical rights that are very resistant to crises. For example, Beatles or Rolling Stones always play, and so the industry has discovered that it is a very safe value and that is why they are investing in buying copyrights," Vintró concludes.
The firm monitors every day the musical pieces played on more than 6,500 channels, including televisions and radio stationsAn example of how copyright evolved during the pandemic are the global collection data from the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC):in 2020, global royalty collections for music, audiovisual, dramatic, literary, and visual arts creators decreased by 9.9%, to 9.32 billion euros, representing a loss of more than 1,000 million euros.
Specifically, TV and radio revenues, the creators' largest source of income, decreased by 4.3%, to 3,700 million euros. But digital rights, driven by the boom in global audio and video streaming consumption, offset part of the decline. This segment grew by 16.6% to 2,400 million euros.