Sesac Talks Acquisitions, Expansion and Fighting Fraud

“Most people know Sesac as a US-based performing rights organization. However, over the past eight years, we have acquired eleven companies and organically grown and expanded our business model…”

Says John Josephson (pictured), CEO, who has overseen Sesac’s expansion into an organization with three new business lines, alongside its traditional operations, and operations in territories far beyond the U.S.

The acquisitions include AudioSalad, Audio Network, Audiam and Music Services, all of which have come since Sesac itself was acquired by investment firm Blackstone in 2017.

What does this make Sesac now? “A scalable, global, multi-line music infrastructure company that sits between rightsholders and companies that want to use music in different commercial contexts,” according to Josephson.

Three of the organization’s four business segments are: performing rights, which account for about 60% of its revenue; church music resources and partnerships with Christian music publishers, which account for about 20%; and audiovisual music and sonic branding, which account for about 13%.

The fourth and newest segment is music services: tools for labels and publishers to manage music licensing, administration and distribution.

“Independent creators account for almost 40% of the global music market, and the growth of this sector shows no signs of slowing down. Small and medium-sized record labels, music publishers and distributors are driving much of this growth, and these independent creators now have to operate in a global marketplace of music consumption,” Josephson says of this evolution.

“With this shift, global licensing and rights management solutions – including a centralized platform for administration, asset management, licensing, distribution and collection – are essential to enable independent creators to thrive and successfully adapt to the marketplace.”

No surprises here: licensing and administering music is a “complex and demanding” task even for an organization like Sesac.

Josephson says the plan is to “continue adding services to our platform so that we can comply with royalty policies and collect any amount owed to our customers.”

As Alexander Wolf, President of Sesac’s International Division, explains, global expansion is also key to its development.

“Emerging markets represent an exciting growth opportunity, both in terms of the creators they can launch globally and in terms of capturing underfunded music consumption. Our company reflects and capitalizes on that opportunity,” he says.

Sesac has designed its multi-territory licensing structures and rights management tools accordingly, and now works with “thousands” of publishers and labels, as well as rights organizations around the world, through its joint venture with Swiss company Suisa.

“We recently established the Asian Alliance Music Rights Organization (AAMRO) to license and manage the combined repertoires of FILSCAP (Philippines), WAMI (Indonesia), MACP (Malaysia), MCT (Thailand) and VCPMC (Vietnam) outside of Asia,” says Wolf.

“Similarly, we have partnered with Soundreef to represent the repertoire of our affiliates in Italy, marking the first time that one of the ten largest PRO organisations in the world has withdrawn its mandate from the European CMO to entrust these rights to an independent management entity.”

“Technology has taken music into new arenas, transforming licensing from a minor business issue into a significant growth driver and revenue stream,” Wolf says.

“We are confident we have the tools and expertise to leverage this growth and deliver greater value to the creative community.”

While Sesac will continue its growth efforts, Josephson is aware of some of the issues the organization — and the industry as a whole — faces.

“Fraud and the dilution of legitimate artists and songwriters’ income is the biggest challenge we all face,” he says.

“We are hopeful and confident that our industry will be able to work together to combat fraud and find solutions that will solve the problem across all platforms.”

“Rightsholders should be paid fairly for their work, and we remain committed to that goal. We have always done everything we can to protect and fulfill that right—and we continue to believe that should be the industry’s primary goal as we work to address this issue,” Josephson added.