Warner/Chappell Music, the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group Corp., has acquired Groove Addicts Production Music Library. The purchase price was not disclosed.
Per the agreement, the Groove Addicts Production Music Library catalog will be exclusively marketed and licensed by Non-Stop Music, an Emmy Award-winning production music company and a division of Warner/Chappell Music since 2007.
Not part of the Warner/Chappell deal is Groove Addicts’ longstanding original music and sound design business, which has been rebranded under the GrooveWorx banner and will continue to create custom scores for commercials, TV shows and other forms of content under the aegis of its president Dain Blair. Maintaining its state-of-the-art recording studio and offices in Santa Monica, Calif., GrooveWorx will build on a Groove Addicts’ track record of creating custom music and sound for hundreds of national television commercials (GE. Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Pepsi, Levi’s, AT&T, Coca-Cola, et al), radio and TV station and network branding IDs and promos, and TV shows such as Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Deal or No Deal, Super Nanny, The Goode Family and Tattoo Highway.
GrooveWorx will also update the Groove Addicts Music Library over the next three years for Non-Stop through top drawer composers, compositions and production.
Inventory infusion
Via Groove Addicts Production Music Library, Non-Stop gains an inventory of more than 44,000 songs and cues. Over the years, the Grooove Addicts Library has provided production music for all media including film, TV, Internet and corporate clients worldwide. Groove Addicts has licensed more than 1,300 cues from its trailer libraries for assorted feature films, among the most recent and upcoming being Alice in Wonderland, Avatar, Clash of the Titans, Cop Out, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Nightmare on Elm Street, Prince of Persia, Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, Star Trek and Wolverine.
In a separate transaction, Warner/Chappell has also acquired London-based Carlin Recorded Music Library (CRML). Non-Stop will also handle marketing and licensing for the CRML catalogs.
Dave Johnson, chairman/CEO of Warner/Chappell Music, said, “The acquisitions of Groove Addicts and CRML further expand our global presence in a fast growing, high margin segment of the music publishing business and provide many more opportunities to showcase the songs in the Warner/Chappell catalog on a wide array of music platforms and services. Together with Non-Stop Music, these valuable libraries will strengthen our standing in the production music business and allow us to offer the music licensing community an even broader and deeper range of music from our catalog.”
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads โ essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More