Many have speculated in general about these sentences of Jonathan Klein during the last four weeks:
- "We plan to launch a consumer business in the next 90 to 120 days" (Goldman Sachs Internet Call, May 23)
- "We will be providing music to our customers within 90 days" (Goldman Sachs Internet Call, May 23)
- "Klein said he has big plans for Livingstone [recently promoted to SVP] to drive Getty's growth in other areas of the company, but he won't say what."
(Seattle Times, May 28)
The Wall Street Journal is just out with "Getty Is Primed To Acquire Pump Audio" (which provides music tracks from independent performing artists) and finally explains more about Getty´s plans with the new music business, but not about the company´s future plans for Livingstone:
Today, Getty Images Inc. plans to announce that it is acquiring Pump Audio for $42 million. For Getty, the world's largest creator and purveyor of still and moving images, buying Pump represents the latest step to expand beyond its core business. [...]
The deal announced today could significantly expand the reach -- and therefore the earning potential -- of Mr. Ballew and the thousands of other musicians Pump represents.
Where Pump has about 30 full-time employees at its Tivoli, N.Y., headquarters, Getty has 650 sales representatives throughout the world and maintains close relationships with big ad agencies. Getty believes that the larger distribution network will help improve Pump's "modest" revenues.
A person familiar with the company says its 2006 revenue was less than $10 million.
Getty Chief Executive Jonathan Klein says he considers the music-licensing business ripe for the kind of streamlining his company accomplished when it started in 1995. "When we entered the photo industry, it was very similar to the music industry," he says. "It was tedious to get hold of a photo; it took a long time; choice was limited." [...]
Getty has another incentive to expand into audio. Demand and prices for high-quality images costing more than $500 each, which accounted for about 40% of its revenue last year, have been dropping.
Getty recently spent $200 million on the parent of WireImage, the online photo agency that specializes in material like red-carpet photos of celebrities.
Mr. Klein says "the high-end imagery business is not going away," although he acknowledges that Getty has recently "reached lower down in the market in terms of price points."
Mr. Klein says is still deciding whether to call his new acquisition Pump Audio by Getty Images or Getty Audio.
I´m pretty confident that Alan Meckler will again be very delighted to notice that Getty Images distantly somehow seems to follow his earlier and similar business decisions on microstock & subscription services and now on music offerings a second time, however with another financial power.
But Pump Audio says "with us, artists can license their music into productions without giving up any ownership" and "you retain 100% ownership of your songs", so it´s not wholly-owned content like in the case of Jupiter´s RoyaltyFreeMusic.com brand whose library included over 1,100 wholly-owned tracks in July 2006 and today over 1,250 tracks.
Pump Audio pays contributing artists 50% of the license fees they receive and also performance royalties for many uses.
More about Pump Audio here and "Here´s the deal".
[Update: more details in the press release]
Related:
- Jupitermedia's Jupiterimages Division Announces New Subscription Service for RoyaltyFreeMusic.com (Feb. 15, 2007)
- Jupitermedia's Jupiterimages Division Announces Acquisition of StudioCutz.com, BlueFuseMusic.com and Other Music Assets (Jan. 18, 2007)
- Jupitermedia's Jupiterimages Division Announces Acquisition of RoyaltyFreeMusic.com (August 07, 2006)
- Jupitermedia's Jupiterimages Division Announces Acquisition of Steve Shapiro Music Library (Apr. 19, 2006)
- Jupitermedia's Jupiterimages Division Announces Acquisition of Crank City Music (March 16, 2006)
- Jupitermedia's JupiterImages Division Announces Acquisitions of Bigshot Media and BBM.net (Dec. 06, 2005)
