Getty Images enters music licensing business with $42 million acquisition of Pump Audio
Getty Images, Inc. (NYSE: GYI), The industry leader in image licensing has made its first foray into the world of commercial music licensing with the acquisition of Pump Audio. Getty Images a business that currently dominates the world of still image licensing has touted strong growth in its footage business recently and appears to be focused on building the business into a more comprehensive content provider for its media, advertising and corporate customers.
The Pump Audio platform allows customers to license original professional quality music to enhance their broadcast, film, video, advertising and online projects. Getty has stated plans to integrate and streamline this offering to satisfy its customers ever-expanding appetite for fresh digital content. The company estimates that the market for commercial music licensing is in excess of $3 billion. This assumption is based on 2006 Enders Analysis data and Wall Street research.
"Getty Images has powered the forward momentum of the visual content industry over the past 12 years, delivering most of the major innovations and bringing new opportunities to our partners and customers. Today there is wide agreement in the music industry that the market for commercial music licensing is fragmented, inefficient and confusing, just as the imagery market once was," said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. "We are confident that bringing our digital distribution, e-commerce expertise and our customer relationships, as well as our understanding of intellectual property, to the music industry will have a similarly positive impact."
"By joining Getty Images we will be creating a powerful, one-stop solution for our customers and for the growing 'new breed' of content creators that need music and images every day in order to be creative," said Steve Ellis, founder and CEO at Pump Audio. "Our unique music solution has, from the start, been driven by the desire to treat our artists fairly and to get them paid for the use of their music. The combination with Getty Images will give many more creative customers access to great original music, and at the same time will provide our contributing artists access to a huge, global marketplace."
Getty’s largest competitor in this space appears to be JupiterMedia which has made the following acquisitions to position itself as a leader in music licensing; Studiocutz.com & BlueFuseMusic.com (Jan 07), RoyaltyFreeMusic.com (Aug 06), Steve Shapiro Music Library (Apr 06), Crank City Music (Mar 06), and BBM.net (Dec 05).
According to the original press release Getty Images acquired Pump Audio for approximately $42 million.
Web: www.gettyimages.com - www.pumpaudio.com
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