Press Clipping
03/06/2020
Article
Analytics startup Pex buys remix-clearance firm Dubset

We’ve been following startup Pex with interest, as it has built a database of music whose usage it can track on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and even podcasts for its rightsholder clients.

Now the company has made an interesting acquisition to expand its business in a new direction: it’s buying Dubset, the startup that has been focusing on clearing remixes and DJ sets for distribution on streaming services.

TechCrunch claimed that Pex will pay between $25m and $50m for Dubset. “There are very few companies in the music business that have successfully licensed as much catalog as Dubset, and the music rights database they’ve built is massive and rare,” Pex’s CEO Rasty Turek told the tech site.

The overriding strategy appears to be to position Pex as a tool for (non-YouTube) platforms keen to comply with the copyright-monitoring provisions of the new European Copyright Directive.

“Basically every platform in the world that operates in the EU will have to identify all copyrighted content on their platform as it comes in or go back and identify all of it,” said Dubset’s Bob Barbiere. “Dubset was really built to serve at the DJ or content creator level… doing it purely for the purposes of mix and remix content. Pex does it in a much bigger way for the platforms.”

The acquisition news came as Pex launched its ‘Attribution Engine’ product, which it says digital platforms can “seamlessly plug in… and be assured they have a complete copyright control solution”.