Merlin extends OTTO partnership for another 3 years

3 July 2019, London: - Merlin, the global digital rights agency for the independent label sector, has extended its partnership with OTTO, the analytics and reporting application that powers its members online dashboard and processes all Digital Service Providers’ sales reports and streaming activity.Launched in 2014, the bespoke dashboard allows Merlin’s global membership of independent labels and distributors to securely track and manage all of their Merlin-related activity, including deal information, royalty reporting, market analysis and financial statements.Chaida Kapfunde, Head of Technology & Development, Merlin, said:“We’re excited to announce the renewal of our partnership with OTTO. As the digital music market evolves, we look forward to our continued collaboration and the opportunity to drive innovation for Merlin members and our partners around the world.”Eric Namour, founder and CEO of Ottomate Ltd said:“Having worked with and seen an organisation such as Merlin grow in the past 5 years has been a great challenge and of course an honour to be backing our independent community with simplified processes. We are extremely happy to be able to work together for another cycle of data processing and provide further services to the Merlin team and its member base.”Last week, Merlin announced record-breaking year-on-year payments to members of $845m for the period April 2018 to March 2019 - including $130m generated from settlements and other non-royalty income.In total, Merlin has paid out more than $2bn to members since opening for business in May 2008, and currently licenses over 25 DSPs globally.Since 2013, OTTO has been gradually building its reporting and data infrastructure, for the past 7 years offering both frontend services and an API-powered solution for aggregators or labels needing the backbone of reporting and statements processing. It has also built a simple reporting and analytics interface for distributed labels. For more information, please visit www.ottomate.me and http://www.ottomate.me/ottito/ About MerlinMerlin is the digital rights agency for the world’s independent label sector.The organisation’s members command in excess of 12% of the digital recorded music market and embody more than 20,000 independent record labels and distributors from 63 countries.These include Altafonte Distribution, Armada Music, Beggars Group, Curb Records, Dim Mak, Domino, Eleven Seven Music Group, Entertainment One, Epitaph Records, !K7, Kobalt Label Services/AWAL, Mad Decent, Merge Records, mtheory, Mom + Pop, Ninja Tune, PIAS, Redeye Distribution, Secretly Group, Symphonic Distribution, Sub Pop, The state51 Conspiracy and Warp Records, representing some of the world’s most important and successful artists.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 over 25 key digital services including Facebook, YouTube Music, Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, Alibaba, NetEase and Tencent, and has reached a number of high value copyright infringement settlements on behalf of its members.Merlin has won ‘Independent Champion’ at the A2IM Libera Awards three times - in ‘15, ‘16 and ‘18. The company’s CEO, Charles Caldas, has been recognised by Billboard in its 2019 list of the 100 most influential people in the music business, for the second year running, while Merlin has been named as an advocate for the publication’s 2018 ‘Indie Power Players’.Merlin has offices in London, New York and Tokyo, with a head office in Amsterdam.www.merlinnetwork.org