New York Metropolis-headquartered rights administration firm Phrase Collections has introduced the shut of a $5 million funding spherical and set its sights on accelerating the buildout of proprietary expertise.
Phrase Collections emailed DMN at this time in regards to the $5 million increase, which has wrapped a bit of over three years after the Jeff Worth-founded enterprise arrived on the scene. Out of the gate, Phrase Collections made headlines for its efforts to acquire royalties for purchasers on the spoken-word facet – referring particularly to the work of comedians together with Jerry Seinfeld, David Cross, and Invoice Engvall.
Subsequently, although, the entity started representing the catalogs of well-known musical artists together with Greta Van Fleet, The Offspring frontman and chief songwriter Dexter Holland, and Metallica, to call a couple of. Allowing for the latter level, Metallica’s Black Squirrel Companions and “an extra group of buyers” are stated to have led the now-closed $5 million spherical.
A longtime Phrase Collections backer – Black Squirrel likewise led the $3.5 million increase that the corporate closed in December of 2021 – the Metallica- and Paul Donahue-founded operation itself debuted in 2020. (Metallica in March bought a Virginia document urgent plant, and Black Squirrel in Could contributed to the $2.7 million spherical of AI music separator AudioShake.)
As initially highlighted, Phrase Collections intends to place the capital in direction of bolstering its proprietary tech and enhancing its overarching world direct licensing mannequin, which it says “removes intermediaries” and “circumvents black bins” en path to paying member creators “more cash, extra rapidly.”
Concerning Phrase Collections’ aforementioned royalty collections on behalf of comedians, late 2021 noticed the entity (in addition to Spoken Giants) kick off a marketing campaign to safe streaming service compensation for stand-ups’ underlying compositions.
All method of comedy works have been then yanked from Spotify and completely different platforms – amongst them SiriusXM’s Pandora, which Spoken Giants and Phrase Collections are additionally suing for the alleged infringement of various compositions. (Considerably comparable fits from particular person Phrase Collections and Spoken Giants purchasers akin to George Lopez, Lewis Black, and the property of Robin Williams have been consolidated final yr.)
Final time we checked in on the courtroom confrontation, the presiding choose in April dismissed with prejudice the monopoly-centered countersuit of SiriusXM/Pandora, figuring out partly that Pandora had “didn’t plead sufficient ‘factual content material that permits the courtroom’ to conclude” a violation of the related part of the Sherman Antitrust Act.