World Screen ole Special Report

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ole Special Report

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10 YEARS O As film and TV companies seek out new revenue streams, ole wants to make sure they don’t forget a crucially important segment: music. Founded ten years ago, ole controls a catalogue of more than 45,000 songs, plus 60,000 hours of television and film music. As the company celebrates its tenth anniversary, chairman and CEO Robert Ott tells World Screen about how film and TV producers have become key clients for ole’s music rights-management business.

WS: What was your mission when you co-founded ole ten years ago?

OTT: Our mission has changed little from day one: profitably acquire quality intellectual property and increase its value while delivering it to customers in the most effective way. At the outset, we focused heavily on music publishing rights management, but we’ve since expanded to include many other rights, including A/V [audiovisual] music publishing and master rights, online rights, A/V secondary rights, production music and any other rights that intuitively jump off of music or A/V assets.

WS: What have been some of the major milestones in the company’s evolution over the last ten years?

OTT: When you start from scratch in the way that ole did, your first major milestone is to break even, and then survive the first three years. We surpassed the breakeven mark around month 18 and haven’t looked back, with ten years of successive growth and some 150 percent growth in the last two years. At the outset, ole was quite conservative in making solid investments and striking a limited number of beneficial partnerships. It then became about buying, and building on, existing platforms [to achieve] economies of scale in areas of business that are natural complements to one another. For example, we moved from the global administration of TV and film music publishing rights to acquiring these rights to adding administration and ownership of A/V secondary rights to now representing the online interests of clients. Great customer service and the world’s best creative and executive talent has been at the foundation of all of this.

Robert Ott 2 World Screen 10/14

WS: What makes ole distinctive in the music rights-management sector?

OTT: We call ourselves “Majorly Indie”—we have the personal touch and agility of a small inde-

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S OF pendent company but the global reach and infrastructure of a major company. It’s personal to us at ole, and our clients and partners can expect that kind of attention. At the same time, we’re a sophisticated, global shop that is as comfortable dealing with complex, international financial transactions as we are talking songs and career development with a songwriter. I also think that our range of activities and services in the film/TV sector is unique, not only in scope but also because of the in-house expertise we have in this space. We look at ourselves as a solution-provider to producers and their financial goals—that goes way beyond the immediate services we offer. If we can help producers achieve financial targets and capital requirements, as well as provide service, that’s the perfect storm. We’ve spent a lot of time and money on developing proprietary IT solutions intent on policing global rights collections and producing transparency and analytics for partners and clients, and I think we’re at the head of the pack in this respect.

WS: Tell me about the services you offer those in the film and TV communities.

OTT: We purchase, administer or co-own A/V music publishing, music master, secondary and online rights. Our investment and partnership in these rights not only supplies capital but also [provides] worldwide collection services with creative support such as sync promotion, access to our production music library and services, organization of global distribution of in-house production music content, access to our hit song catalogue and management of YouTube, and other online rights.

WS: How have you seen this segment of the business grow since the company’s founding?

OTT: ole focused on film and TV from the beginning, and it’s still a major growth area for us. The expansion of cable, the channel universe and now over-the-top and online have been remarkable, and we are involved in all of these expanding areas of the industry. It’s likely 80 percent of our business at this time.

WS: What are your goals for this part of your business in the next year?

OTT: Deals ole has struck in the last year with Sony Pictures, Miramax, Nu Image and others have greatly

“We call ourselves ‘Majorly Indie’—we have the personal touch and agility of an independent company but the global reach and infrastructure of a major company.” extended our knowledge of and stake in the film and TV space. We’re very excited about film and TV and emerging opportunities in over-the-top and online. We have a good deal of dry powder with which to continue acquisitions, and it’s not beyond the pale to consider that we might grow another 150 percent in this area over the next 18 to 24 months. At the same time, we’re investing heavily in beefing up our IT infrastructure and data analytics capability to handle the staggering amount of data entailed in modern global rights management.

We intend to fully arm our partners and clients with the ability to collect effectively on a global basis and gain deep understanding of their data.

We’re not living in The Matrix yet, but we’re certainly headed in that direction.

10/14 World Screen 3

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