Emi Music Publishing Taps Peoplesound.com For A&r

EMI Music Publishing has inked a deal with an online partner to secure a new generation of European bands and artists. The publisher will begin working with peoplesound.com, a free music download Internet site, to offer music publishing contracts to the best and most popular acts that showcase their works on the peoplesound site.

Under the partnership, peoplesound will identify the hottest original acts on its site and offer them worldwide publishing deals in conjunction with EMI Music Publishing. EMI will have a say in which acts are signed, but the company is confident in peoplesound's abilities to find exciting new talent.

"We are tapping into another A&R source," Sally Perryman, EMI Music Publishing senior VP of A&R/creative, tells Billboard. "We trust their ability to sign new artists. We will be very involved, but we know [peoplesound] very well—we think alike, and the kind of artists they want to find are the same kind that we are looking for."

EMI will administer songwriters' royalties on a global basis and will also be responsible for exploiting artists' copyrights through its own international network.

Peoplesound.com monitors the reactions of more than 1 million visitors each month to its roster of more than 9,000 new acts across Europe. The company will use the feedback from these visitors to help identify the best new acts to publish.

Once signed, EMI Music Publishing will offer artists the ability to generate royalties via such potential uses as synchronization licenses in commercials, films, television productions, videos, karaoke, and the Internet.

Ernesto Schmitt, peoplesound president, says, "Peoplesound.com is a powerful place to identify the best new artists because it can target individual consumers with a rich offering and receive their direct feedback. By combining this immediate, large-scale feedback with the industry experience of our in-house artist and repertoire team, we are convinced that we have developed a new, effective, and efficient approach to assess and select the best new talent. Our partnership with EMI Music Publishing will also ensure that our published artists gain the optimum commercial exposure and generate the best possible royalties from their music on a global basis."

Adds Perryman, "The breadth of music available on peoplesound.com and the site's ability to assess talent using a mix of consumer and expert opinion were very appealing to us."

Founded in the U.K. last year by Schmitt, Martin Turner, Paul Levett, and Bruno Heese, peoplesound now has more than 100 employees. The company has subsidiaries in France and Germany, and the Web site is accessible in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.