MUMBAI: Independent music publishing and global music rights management services company- Kobalt has announced AMRA (American Music Rights Association) as a CMO (Collective Rights Management Organisation).  Kobalt acquired AMRA, which will now be a global, direct, digital mechanical and performing rights society, in order to enhance services to rights owners.

This will help AMRA to leverage Kobalt’s advanced royalty processing platform- KORE (on license to AMRA), “to provide fast, efficient royalty distribution with total transparency.” Recently, Kobalt Neighbouring Rights (KNR) announced a series of new signings to lead-off the 2015 summer, including Ariana Grande, Lil Wayne, Magic!, OMI, Björn Ulvaeus (of ABBA), Roxette, Nero, American Authors, Christina Perri and Hurts, who will benefit from Kobalt’s KORE technology platform.

AMRA will continue to partner with digital service providers (DSPs) and will broaden the direct-collection capabilities around the world. AMRA will license AMRA publisher members’ Anglo-American repertoire to DSPs and collect public performance fee on behalf of AMRA writer members. The statement issued by the company also said that single territory digital music services will continue to be licensed by the local collection societies. Kobalt COO James Fitzherbert-Brockholes commented, “AMRA’s unique strategy to license directly to the global multi-territorial DSPs [e.g. Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.] is the most efficient way to handle the 'high volume/low transactional value’ of music repertoire in a streaming world. The traditional model of individual licenses across 100 local territories for one major DSP does not promote transparency, efficiency or economies of scale in today’s digital business.”

Kobalt CEO Willard Ahdritz said, “With AMRA, we are now able to fully execute our original Kobalt vision of trust and technology for creators and rights owners on a global scale. AMRA allows us to offer service unlike anything ever seen before in royalty collections. The industry can no longer afford to spend $5 collecting $1 – the efficiency and transparency of AMRA is the future.”

Only Kobalt and all other AMRA publishers will have access to their specific data and will have no access to any other publisher data, whether or not those publishers are members of AMRA, stated the release.