SAN DIEGO, Sept. 24, 2008 – On the heels of the landmark agreement establishing rates for limited downloads and interactive streams, RoyaltyShare, Inc. today announced a powerful new platform aimed at bridging the gap between digital music services (DMS's) and music publishers.  The new service will be offered to both music publishers and online retailers and is designed to simplify the tracking and payment of licenses established as a result of yesterday's agreement between the Digital Media Association (DiMA), the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA)  the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and the Songwriters Guild of America (SGA). The platform is currently under development and will be available in Q4.

"Setting the rates was the first critical step," said Bob Kohn, chairman and CEO of RoyaltyShare. "The second step is equally important – delivering the technology services scalable enough to handle the complexity and volume of transactions generated by streaming and limited download services.  Music publishers and retailers now face a common problem and it must be solved quickly in order to avoid a massive bottleneck of payments owed to songwriters."

DMS's that sign up for RoyaltyShare's service will have a complete reporting solution that automates and simplifies the complexities of tracking licenses across potentially thousands of publishers.  The platform allows DMS's to track all of their licenses, including ownership splits, and accurately allocate revenue from streams and limited downloads to collection agencies, music publishing administrators and thousands of independent music publishers.  The service facilitates the ingestion of song data from publishers and provides a solution for matching songs to transactions.  Combined with powerful analytics, the shared platform allows DMS's to radically reduce the complexity and associated costs of reporting to many parties.

Music publishers who sign up for RoyaltyShare's services will benefit from efficient, hands-free processing of transaction data from dozens of DMS's offering subscription or ad-based services.

RoyaltyShare's platform includes data interfaces to all the major DMS's, whether they use the RoyaltyShare platform or not, and allows for automated loading and matching transactions at the click of the mouse. RoyaltyShare also offers publishers a unique view into the revenue streams including advanced analytics for monitoring performance of songs across different services.

"For these new statutory mechanical licenses to work in practice, it is essential for a neutral service provider to work with both the publishers and the retailers," added Kohn.  "RoyaltyShare is in a unique position to provide this service due to our strong relationships with both music publishers and retailers.  Our only skin in the game is to make sure that data flows smoothly between the parties, ensuring minimal costs and thriving business."

RoyaltyShare's new services build on the company's extensive experience, patented technology and substantial expertise in processing mechanical royalties and digital sales for hundreds of record labels.

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