An Irish tech start-up that lets bands know whenever their song has been played, worldwide

Paul Shiels (pictured) and Mark Northam have come up with software that will stamp and track songs all over the internet.

It means that whenever any of 10,000 global radio stations plays their song, the band or music company will know. They'll also get a recorded MP3 snippet of it. Which means that if the station didn't pay royalties, the band can send them an invoice, with the MP3 snippet as proof.

His company's name is Tunetrak. It's a very attractive idea for the music industry. Unsurprisingly, it has already attracted significant interest. One music company has put up "several hundred thousand" euro to fund the project, which has just finished a three-month funded stint in the National Digital Research Centre.

"This will give bands in-depth intelligence as to where their music is being played, all over the world," said Shiels. "It's the first time that this capability will be open to bands and music publishers. At present, there are media monitoring services, but they only operate in small territories."

"The software takes an MP3 recording of the broadcast, for use by the band or label. So they can then approach the radio or television station with evidence of its having been played," said Shiels.

Shiels said that Tunetrak has already struck deals with the Vatican, the Elvis Foundation and the Martin Luther King Foundation on tracking copyrighted music and speeches.

Comments

[Emmet Ryan]

Are there not broadcast copyright issues though on their end? As in can the MP3 snippet be held as proof if it was obtained without a licence from the station?

[Paul Shiels]

Hi Emmet

As we are acting on behlaf of the copyright owners we effectively get permissions from the owners to monitor usage of their copyrights. The station is a public performance medium and as such is in the public domain as soon as its broadcast. In short the station has no rights to license anything they play this is down to publishers labels and artists.

Paul Shiels

[Emmet Ryan]

Hmm ok, thanks for the response Paul. Sounds interesting. Are there limitations then with satellite radio or other stations which charge for listenership?

[Paul Shiels]

We currently monitor over 200,000 web based radio and music websites these sites like the radio stations have blanket licenses which allow them to play as much music as they like. We are merely providing business inteligence data to the copyright owners not to pursue royalties but to use as a tool for promotional budgets and fan interaction.

[Niall]

Is there no Tunetrak website?

[Paul]

We are currently putting it together and having started life out as www.rsrdigital.com we will be building upon the content on this website and migrating accross in the next few weeks.

Paul

[Todd Alexander]

Is there any way to contact you regarding possible application integration?

Best Regards,

Todd Alexander
Registr8.com

[coach outlet stores]

I LOVE this! SO cute!*