Merlin Reduces Fees
- Administration Fees on Commercial Deals Lowered by 17% Mon 28 July, London:- Merlin, the global rights agency for the independent label sector, has announced a further significant reduction for its members on its commercial deal administration fees.As of June 1st 2014, the agency’s administration fees relating to commercial deals have been reduced from 3% to 2.5%, or 3.9% to 3.25% for Merlin members who are not members of local Independent Trade Associations. This represents a reduction of 16.67% on Merlin’s previous rates.Due to the cost and nature of obtaining settlements and recoveries from infringing services, administration fees relating to those activities remain unchanged.Merlin CEO Charles Caldas commented: “It is very satisfying to be able to announce another reduction in these fees after the 50% reduction we made in 2013, and we trust that this further underlines our commitment to continuing to deliver the maximum possible value to our members via our activities.” ABOUT MERLINMerlin is the global rights agency for the world’s most important independent music companies.The organisation’s members command around a 10% share of the US and global recorded music markets and embody more than 20,000 independent record labels and distributors worldwide, representing some of the world’s most important independent artists.These include Tom Waits (Epitaph Records), Vampire Weekend (Beggars Group), Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (Kobalt Label Services), Arcade Fire (Merge), Prodigy (Cooking Vinyl), Arctic Monkeys (Domino), Enter Shikari ([PIAS]), and Bon Iver (Secretly Canadian).Merlin acts to ensure these companies have effective access to new and emerging revenue streams and that their rights are appropriately valued and protected.Since commencing operations in May 2008, Merlin has licensed key digital services including Spotify, Beats Music, Google Play, Rdio and Deezer and reached a number of high value copyright infringement settlements on behalf of its members with, amongst others, Limewire, XM Satellite Radio and Grooveshark.www.merlinnetwork.org