Epidemic spread from Stockholm


    One of the most infuriating things on the Internet today is regional and national legislation when it comes to digital content. For gaming the always excellent Rock, Paper, Shotgun coined the term ‘No Oceans’ to campaign against the annoying habit of companies to restrict launch dates by region. The Internet has no oceans, so why are we restricted from downloading or accessing something purely based on what piece of land we stand upon?

    Epidemic Sound felt the same way about music restrictions and through their new partnership with Mediakraft Networks they plan to do away with such antiquated rules.

    The simple case study of the problem is in Germany. Having friends there I’m acutely aware of the ridiculous way that many videos that you could freely watch in the rest of the world are blocked in Deutschland. Due to disagreements between Google and GEMA, a German performing rights organisation, it is estimated that 61.5% of the 1000 most viewed YouTube clips are blocked. My friends and I are not alone in wanting something to change, the team behind Epidemic Sound were too, and they weren’t going to sit around and wait for Google and GEMA to bash out a deal, they wanted a better solution.

    “Production music accounts for 90 percent of all music used in TV and Internet video, but the system for licensing that music is basically a 19th century business model that doesn’t work in a 21st century world where content is watched worldwide, anytime, on many different devices,” said Oscar Höglund, Epidemic Sound co-founder and CEO. “As professional content creators and music producers, the founder of Epidemic Sound lived this nightmare first hand, and this is exactly why we started the company.”

    Fed up with the current situation a team of award-winning Swedish music, TV and Internet entrepreneurs came together and founded Epidemic Sound. They have amassed a library of professional quality production music for creating soundtracks. There are more than 25,000 unique tracks, all tagged and formatted for Epidemic Sound’s search and music editing tools. Each track is split into STEMS – individual tracks where the instruments can be heard and edited separately – thereby creating over 100,000 sound files available for use.

    With this arsenal of content they say that they are ‘reinventing production music’ because they have the first library that grants content creators access to professional-quality soundtracks for use in any country, on any platform, forever, for only a small fee. They are able to do this because they aren’t representing other’s music, they are selling their own, having bought it directly from composers. Due to this they feel able to promise that no additional charges are ever required of anyone.

    It is this flexible library that Mediakraft Networks, YouTube’s largest mutlichannel network in Central Europe with over 500 free channels, will now be able to make use of.

    “Professional quality soundtracks can actually make or break a video’s success,“ said Christoph Poropatits, executive vice president for broadcast and operations in London for Munich-based Mediakraft. “Melodies and sounds are essential for the popularity of any video. We’re happy to be partnering with Epidemic Sound as it guarantees that both the video creators and the composers are compensated for their individual creative works. Epidemic Sound makes music 100 percent headache-free by guaranteeing zero territorial, legal or commercial limits.”

    Multi-channel networks are essentially online video companies that contract with creators, and produce, distribute and market content for increasingly growing Internet audiences. So you can see how having access to music free from limits is a wonderful proposition, allowing content to be make that will reach the widest possible audience.

    While many of the corporate old guard keep themselves busy placing pointless restrictions on our ability to create and view content, we will keep championing the new wave of pioneers who rise above and create new solutions. Besides we always have our VPN clients to access everything else we want to. The Internet has no oceans, one day they will understand.