NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — Two of the leading performance rights organizations in the U.S. – Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) announced the formation of a joint task force to help combat fraud in music copyrights.
According to the two companies, the task force will work to address suspicious registrations associated with musical works across their combined repertoires.
To address the alleged suspicious behavior, the task force will draw on multiple disciplines and include a team of copyright, technical, distribution, legal, business, and product experts.
The team will focus on multiple areas, including data integrity within the volumes of registration requests and protocols around identity verification and validation, among other areas.
They will also work to raise awareness around suspicious activity and schemes and collaborate with other partners around the world in the music copyright space, the companies said.
“Fraud is a complex global challenge that all collective management organizations and DSPs must confront with increasing frequency. Building on the strength of our Songview partnership and leveraging our expertise in building an interconnected data platform, ASCAP and BMI are uniquely positioned to lead this collaborative and proactive approach to enhance the integrity of data in the music industry and to protect the rights and royalties of music creators,” stated ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews.
“The integrity of our data is paramount and something we spend an enormous amount of time and effort to protect. Given the explosion of music being uploaded to digital platforms and the speed in which that information connects to databases around the world, we felt it made sense to join forces with ASCAP to address these concerns. Bad actors don’t just limit themselves to one company, or one territory, and the more we can collaborate on this issue, the better it is for everyone involved,” added BMI President and CEO Mike O’Neill.
