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02/17/2021
Article
Tencent Throws In To $57 Investment Round In Music Licensing Platform Pex

The Los Angeles based Pex has secured a further $57m investment.

The round included existing investors with additional participation from Tencent, Tencent Music Entertainment, the CueBall Group, NecGen Ventures Partners, Amaranthine and more.

Pex was originally founded in 2014 and their technology monitors social networks worldwide and other platforms that rely on UGC content. Their job/goal is to weed out music and film content that belongs to rights holders.

The American company boasts that it can find “snippets as short as 1 second across dozens of platforms worldwide”.

Last year, the company acquired Dubset Media Holdings in a buyout worth $25m. The investment was to help scale its Attribution Engine (AE), which they describe as “the licensing infrastructure for a better Internet”.

Pex has claimed that its AE technology can review 10,000 hours of content per minute, find all the uses of audio and video copyrights, attribute the copyrights to their full set of owners, and ensure the rights holders have licensed and cleared the copyright for use, in less than 5 seconds beleive it or not.

Speaking on the new technology CEO Rusty Turek said: “Attribution is vital to the Internet; it can help protect copyright without stifling creation.” He adds that “AE sets new standards in speed and scale and is the first platform capable of meeting today’s content growth and demands. “It replaces unreliable upload filters and takedown requests with real-time use authorisation and licensing, benefiting creators while recognising and compensating those whose works are sampled and shared.”

The main aim of Pex is to provide a clear and transparent way for fair use to be brought into the digital realm. As Per COO Amadea Choplin explains: “We live in a world where everyone is creating, mixing and remixing copyrighted works. But the ability to rapidly identify, attribute, and license them in real-time is the missing link to address the value-gap. Instead of fearing regulations, or finding loopholes to make them toothless, what if we relied on a better infrastructure for today’s Internet?” Amadea continues, “If we could seamlessly compensate artists – if we could enable a culture of fair and universal attribution – then we could set the stage for a truly free and open Internet. The solution to this puzzle lies not with litigation, legislation, or innovation alone, but with the combined strength of sound law, breakthrough technology, and durable social norms. In short, we need a leap forward in trust.”