MUSICSTATION SIGNS EMI REPERTOIRE

Omnifone has signed a pan-European licensing deal with EMI, PRS and GEMA providing its award-winning unlimited music downloads service, MusicStation, with access to millions of EMI music tracks.

This is one of the first pan-European deals brokered by CELAS, the organisation exclusively representing EMI Music’s repertoire for digital exploitation in Europe.

MusicStation is the all-you-can-eat mobile music service allowing mobile phone users to gain unlimited access to full music tracks on industry-standard mobiles for a small weekly fee or bundled into price plans for no extra cost.

The deal provides Omnifone with access to the EMI Music Publishing English language repertoire. The deal covers the services currently live in Sweden and the UK and will support the further roll-out of the MusicStation service throughout Europe.

Managing Directors of CELAS, John Rathbone and Alexander Wolf said: ‘We are excited to have facilitated this deal and that legitimate pan-European licensing solutions for online and mobile usage are now a reality.

‘We aim to make it easier for DSPs such as Omnifone to get the rights it needs for Europe from a single source instead of trawling around Europe picking-up rights from each local society.’

Omnifone, CEO Rob Lewis said: ‘Omnifone is pleased to be working with EMI, PRS and GEMA to launch this service across Europe. This single agreement gives us access to EMI repertoire for use across the whole of Europe.’

CELAS is the first organisation in Europe to offer licences for cross border music services for online and mobile applications in one place. More CELAS deals are expected to be announced in the coming months.

  www.musicstation.com