Capital to be used for acceleration of first of its kind direct global digital licensing and collection for Comedians and other spoken word authors, music publishers and songwriters
For the first time Comedians will be paid for past and future streams and broadcasts of literary works on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube Music, SiriusXM and others
Music publishers and songwriters to receive 30% more revenue annually along with unparalleled transparency
NEW YORK, December 2, 2021 – Digital rights management company Word Collections has secured $3.5 million in funding lead by Black Squirrel Partners and an additional group of investors to be used to accelerate its technology build and business goals. Investors include the Senior Advisor to the CEO at ICM Partners and former COO and General Counsel for ICM Rick Levy, Metallica, principals of QPrime Management, Jason Mraz, Thomas Dolby and more. See below for a complete list.
Word Collections (www.wordcollections.com), launched in July, 2020 with a focus on getting comedians and other spoken word performers paid for the use of their literary works in Spotify, Apple Music, AM/FM radio, digital radio, Amazon Music, YouTube, YouTube Music, Deezer, Peloton, TikTok, Twitch, Roblox, Snap and many more. It recently expanded into licensing and collecting for the music publishing catalogs of Metallica, Thomas Dolby, Songwriters Guild Of America, Gerencia360, St. Nicholas and others. Its management team and founders previously got over $1.5 billion in royalties into the pockets of artists, songwriters and music publishers with their companies TuneCore and Audiam.
In the past year, Word Collections has identified and begun recovering over $1 billion in earned and unpaid royalties specifically for streams and broadcast of spoken word comedy. This on top of the almost half a billion dollars in earned but unpaid royalties sitting with the MLC from just U.S. streams and additional billions in earned unpaid royalties around the globe for spoken word comedians, songwriters and music publishers in streaming mechanical and public performance royalties.
As exemplified in the Music Modernization Act, the traditional industry has adopted a business strategy and practices to allow the inefficiencies to exist and to take and allocate to themselves others’ royalties based on their market share. Rather than capitalize on a broken system to the detriment of comedians, songwriters and music publishers, Word Collections fixes it and gets the money into the rights holders’ pockets while removing liability for digital services.
Investors include:
Clifford Burnstein
Co-Founder QPrime Management
Peter Mensch
Co-Founder QPrime Management
Metallica
Eric Wasserman
Founder WG&S business management
Jason Mraz
Thomas Dolby
Rick Levy
Senior Advisor to the CEO at ICM Partners and former COO and General Counsel for ICM
Jeff Rosen
Manager, publishing administrator Bob Dylan
Michael C. Lau
President AIMP New York, MLC committee member, former COO/CTO RoundHill
Current list of Word Collections music publishing clients:
Metallica
Thomas Dolby
Bridgeport
Gerencia360
Songwriters Guild of America (SGA)
Current list of Word Collections spoken word clients:
Bill Engvall
Dick Gregory Estate
Muhammad Ali Estate
Margaret Cho
Robin Williams Estate
George Carlin Estate
Bill Hicks Estate
David Cross
Robert Schimmel Estate
Andrew Dice Clay
Waddie Mitchell
Buddy Hackett Estate
Jim Breuer
Sinbad
Louie Anderson
Tommy Tiernan
Paul Mecurio
Dwayne Kennedy
Nick Griffin
Matt Ruby
Jake Johannsen
Corey Rodrigues
Eddie Brill
Word Collections website:
https://www.wordcollections.com/
Rights holders interested in working with Word Collections should contact: contact@wordcollections.com / (929) 274-1863
Media contact:
Chart Room Media
Brendan Gilmartin
Brendan@chartroommedia.com
347-450-3048 – ph.