BMG and ITV Studios, the leading international production and distribution business, have announced a wide-ranging global collaboration. The multifaceted agreement, which makes BMG the new music partner of choice across all areas of ITV Studios’ business, includes records, publishing, production music and synch.
The innovative partnership consists of a global music publishing and administration agreement for future commissioned music, the launch of a joint venture production music label and the development of a customised online platform. In addition, the deal sets the stage for ITV Studios to collaborate with BMG and its artist and composer clients on new creative synergies. For BMG it presents opportunities for the marketing of frontline artists as well as potential joint programme and film development concepts.
David McGraynor, chief operating officer, ITV Studios, said: “Music is a key part of the world-class programmes our talented production teams around the globe create to entertain millions of viewers. BMG demonstrated that they understood our music challenges and have come to the table with innovative solutions. We are looking forward to connecting our teams and working with everyone at BMG around the world to make this partnership a huge success.”
Alistair Norbury, president repertoire and marketing BMG UK, added: “Entering into such a comprehensive partnership in the middle of the pandemic when we can’t all be in the same room together is an incredible testament to BMG and ITV Studios’ ability to work in a coordinated way across all business segments. The partnership opens up a great opportunity for our artists and songwriter clients to maximise their exposure to television audiences. I would like to thank ITV Studios for their faith in BMG.”
As a significant part of the deal, BMG’s fast-growing production music business, along with ITV Studios will launch a new co-owned production music label. More broadly, and in addition – BMG Production Music will provide ITV Studios with preferential global access to its entire production music repertoire line-up.
John Clifford, EVP and global MD, BMG Production Music, said: “We are thrilled to kick off the production music part of this game-changing partnership with ITV Studios and our teams around the world. Not only does this deal slingshot our production music business to an almost immediate, market-leading position in the UK – but with ITV Studios already established as a prominent international production company, we are excited to play a significant, mutually beneficial role in further advancing ITV Studios’ music strategy around the world.”
The creative collaboration is underpinned by state-of-the-art technology across all of BMG’s rights management businesses. ITV Studios will benefit from BMG’s first-in-class royalty portal, myBMG, which offers transparent insight into important royalty information, analytics, and reporting 24/7.
Additionally, BMG will create a customised online platform offering an intuitive, cutting-edge music delivery system to act as a one-stop-shop for ITV Studios’ creative teams. The platform will host ITV’s commissioned music, music from the new joint venture production music label as well as BMGPM’s broader catalogue offering. The portal will also provide a direct link for ITV Studios’ creative teams to browse and search across BMG’s synch catalogue.