“Most people know Sesac as a US-based performing rights organisation. But, over the last eight years, we’ve acquired eleven companies and organically grown and broadened our business model…”
That’s John Josephson (pictured) speaking: the CEO who has overseen Sesac Music Group’s expansion into an organisation with three new business lines alongside its traditional business, and operations in territories well beyond the US.
The acquisitions have included AudioSalad, Audio Network, Audiam and Music Services among others, all since Sesac itself was acquired by investment firm Blackstone in 2017.
What does that make the group now? “A scaled, global, multi-line music infrastructure company that sits between rightsholders and businesses that want to exploit music in a variety of commercial contexts” according to Josephson.
Three of the organisation’s four segments are: performing rights, which remains around 60% of its revenue; church music resources and its partnerships with Christian music publishers, which is around 20%; and audiovisual music and sonic branding, which is around 13%.
The fourth and newest segment is music services: tools for labels and publishers to handle licensing, administration and distribution of music.
“Independent creators account for almost 40% of the global music market and the growth of that sector shows no sign of slowing down. Small and mid-size record labels, music publishers, and distributors are driving much of this growth and these independent creators must now operate in a global music consumption marketplace,” says Josephson about this evolution.
“With this shift, global licensing and rights management solutions – including a centralised platform to handle administration, asset management, licensing, distribution and collections – are necessary to enable independent creators to grow and adapt to the market successfully.”
No surprises here: licensing and administration for music is “complex and challenging” even for an organisation like Sesac Music Group.
Josephson says the plan is to “continue to add services to our platform to ensure we’re following the royalties and collecting every micro-penny that is owed to our customers”.
Global expansion is also key to the group’s evolution, as president of international Alexander Wolf explains.
“Emerging markets present an interesting opportunity for growth in terms of both the creators they can launch across the globe and capturing under-monetised consumption of music. Our company reflects and capitalises on these opportunities,” he says.
Sesac Music Group has been designing its multi-territory licensing structures and rights management tools accordingly, and now works with “thousands” of publishers and labels, as well as PROs across the world, alongside its joint venture with Swiss society Suisa.
“We recently founded the Asian Alliance Music Rights Organization (AAMRO) to license and administer the combined repertories of FILSCAP (Philippines), WAMI (Indonesia), MACP (Malaysia), MCT (Thailand), and VCPMC (Vietnam) outside Asia,” says Wolf.
“Similarly, we partnered with Soundreef for the representation of our affiliates’ repertoire in Italy, marking the first time one of the ten largest PROs in the world has withdrawn its mandate from a European CMO to entrust those rights to an independent management entity.”
“Technology has pushed music into more arenas, turning licensing from a minor business matter to a major growth engine and revenue driver,” says Wolf. “We are confident that we have the tools and expertise to harness this growth and drive increased value back to the creative community.”
While the group will continue its growth efforts, Josephson is alive to some of the problems that the organisation – and the wider industry – are having to tackle.
“Fraud and the dilution of revenue for legitimate artists and songwriters is the biggest challenge we all face,” he says. “We are hopeful and confident that our industry can work together to combat fraud collectively and develop solutions that get at the problem across all the platforms.”
“Rightsholders should receive fair compensation for their works, and we remain committed to that aim. We have always done all we can to protect that right and deliver on it – and we continue to feel that should be the primary focus of the industry as we look to solve for this,” adds Josephson.