Friends of AIR
In a global business environment where multinational companies manoeuvre to control an overwhelming percentage of the market, the independent sector needs all the support it can get.
Our Friends of AIR program allows you to get behind and provide support to the Australian independent sector. It also puts you and your company in front of and in contact with AIR’s many members.
All of our valued Friends Of AIR below are already providing great support and services for AIR and the Australian independent music sector as a whole.
If you’re keen to get involved or know more, please contact our Chief Executive Officer – maria@air.org.au
Friends Of AIR:
Banks Group
Banks Group has been providing specialist accounting and taxation advice to the Music, Arts, Television, Film and Entertainment Industries for the last 20 years.
CD Baby
Over the past 25 years, CD Baby has grown to be one of the largest distributors of independent music in the world. Home to over 2 million artists and close to 20 million tracks that are made available to 150+ digital services around the globe, CD Baby’s complete artist-services platform streamlines the complexities of global music distribution, rights management, and promotion—connecting independent musicians with new listeners and revenue sources so they can enjoy creative autonomy and thrive on their own terms. Founded and run by artists for artists, CD Baby exists to empower artists to build a bigger audience, monetize their rights while maintaining control of their own songs, and establish a successful career in music.
Chartmetric
Chartmetric is an elegant tool for artists, artist managers, and labels. They collect artist-related data from various sources such as Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, iTunes, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Bandsintown, and Youtube. Tracking nearly 2M artists, and updating over 5,000 different charts every day. Chartmetric also provides data for Radio, Film/TV synch, A&R, Touring, and much more. They also just added TIKTOK data from charts to likes/followers!
Curve
Curve is a royalty system designed by music royalties experts who understand the needs of the music industry today & tomorrow. It is a powerful & complete solution for managing your rights and processing royalties related to both Recorded Music & Publishing. Curve is an advanced music royalty toolset that caters to multiple types of deals and complex deal scenarios, including, but not limited to, profit share, net receipt deals, crossed contracts, rate escalations, mechanical liability deductions, controlled composition clauses and black box revenue distribution. It can handle complex royalty rates and terms, and rapidly calculate royalties using massive volumes of income data. Ingesting millions of lines of data & producing statements takes minutes & hours versus days & weeks. When it comes to music royalties, Curve covers it all.
Disco
Disco
Ditto
Ditto Music is an independent distribution and label services company, which has 22 offices across 19 countries and now works with over 200 000 artists globally.
Downtown Artist & Label Services
Downtown Artist & Label Services offers music distribution, strategic marketing solutions, end-to-end project management and funding to entrepreneurial artists, labels and their partners, ranging from emerging talent at the forefront of pop culture to the most storied managers and record labels.
The Downtown platform offers enhanced analytics, split pay, and complete music audio and video asset management.
Owned and operated by Downtown Music Holdings, Downtown Artist & Label Services enables artists and their partners to succeed on their own terms, without sacrificing any ownership in their works, control over their strategy, or their creative vision.
Downtown Music Publishing
Since the foundation of Downtown Music Publishing in 2007 and Songtrust in 2011, publishing has been at the core of Downtown’s mission, and as the landscape transformed, Downtown divested its owned song catalogue in 2021 to focus exclusively on providing world-class publishing administration and creative services. Downtown Music’s publishing administration services – Downtown Music Publishing, Songtrust, and Sheer Publishing Africa – currently have nearly 2 million songwriters and almost 5 million copyrights under management.
Representing nearly 100 years of popular music, clients include Miles Davis, The National, Raja Kumari and many others
Downtown Neighbouring Rights
Powered by FUGA’s end-to-end technology, Downtown Neighbouring Rights offers a bespoke, client-centric offering to a wide range of artists and labels from in-house experts with more than thirty years of experience. Through our direct relationships with collection societies in all major territories, our service is efficient, transparent and designed to maximize your royalty collections. Downtown Neighbouring Rights clients include Justin Bieber, Jon Batiste, Sub Pop Records, Lindsey Buckingham and the Estate of Ella Fitzgerald.
Entertainment Accounting & Taxation Services
Entertainment Accounting is a full-service accounting, taxation and business advisory firm specialising in the music industry
found.ee
found.ee is an integrated marketing platform designed to be a digital agency in a box. Helping artists, creators, and music companies collect, understand and utilize owned audience data, found.ee tools power sophisticated data management and programmatic advertising solutions, all in an easy-to-use self-serve web platform.
FUGA
FUGA is the largest full-service B2B music distributor in the world. Mixing deep marketing prowess with continual investment in leading technologies, FUGA’s clients – from Armada, Better Noise and Curb to Mom + Pop, Epitaph, and Ninja Tune – get equal access to its all-encompassing services. FUGA is one of the very few distributors to sit on the highest preferred partner tiers for Spotify, Apple, and all other major DSPs. After its acquisition by Downtown Music Holdings in 2020, FUGA has joined Downtown Neighbouring Rights, Downtown Music Publishing and Downtown Music Services in the newly established Downtown Music division led by President, Pieter van Rijn. FUGA’s global marketing team operates across 17 countries and its partners deliver over a quarter of the world’s new releases. Together with marketing and distribution, FUGA’s holistic product and services suite – including analytics, royalty accounting, neighbouring rights, rights management, and white label services – empowers over 1000 music rights holders globally.
The Gild Group
The Gild Group is an accounting, taxation and business advisory firm with a passion for wealth creation servicing the music industry.
GYROstream
GYROstream is the leading independent and Australian-owned digital music distribution and artist services company, delivering music to Spotify, Apple, TikTok, Amazon, Youtube and 100+ more. Launched in 2018 and based in Brisbane, Queensland with offices in Sydney and Melbourne, the company represents tens of thousands of Australian and New Zealand artists for global distribution. Much more than just music distribution, GYROstream offers additional ad-hoc and bespoke services for independent artists such as PR, digital marketing, playlist pitching, vinyl/CD manufacture, sync opportunities and more.
Awarded The Music Network’s Music Distributor of the Year award in 2021, GYROstream and its artists are seeing increased success in both AU/NZ and beyond. The company distributed five independent releases landing in the 2021 triple j’s Hottest 100, recently achieved an ARIA number one album with Ruby Fields ‘Been Doin’ It For a Bit’, and is achieving global recognition for independent artists and labels through targeted DSP playlisting and promotion with stacks of local and international editorial playlist wins every week. A company that prides itself on premium artist support, GYROstream aims to assist and educate independent AU/NZ artists about effective release strategies to get the best results for their music.
GYRO = GET YOUR RECORD OUT
INgrooves Music Group
Ingrooves Music Group is a world leader in music distribution, marketing, and technology that empowers labels and entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and thrive in the global music industry. Our comprehensive suite of solutions includes marketing strategy, insights and analytics, rights management, advertising, royalty accounting, video monetization and music licensing, all accessible through an intuitive client platform. Headquartered in Los Angeles with offices throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, Ingrooves works everywhere music is streamed.
Media Arts Lawyers
Media Arts Lawyers act for some of Australia’s highest-profile musicians, events, recording and publishing companies. They also represent many emerging artists and aim to be the first point of legal contact for all creative and commercial projects irrespective of budget.
Merlin
Merlin’s membership represents 15% of the global market share. Members consist of independent labels, distributors and other rightsholders, representing tens of thousands of labels and hundreds of thousands of artists from every country in the world. Merlin navigates the music ecosystem by striking premium deals with digital services that enable its members to better control their future. Digital services have the means to efficiently license the world’s most valuable independent music.
Merlin’s members include the likes of Amuse, Armada Music, AVL Group (including CD Baby, DashGo and FUGA), AWAL, Beggars Group, Cinq Music Group, Curb Records, Dim Mak, DistroKid, Domino, Entertainment One, Epitaph Records, Foundation Media, Kontor New Media, KVZ Music, Mad Decent, mtheory, Mushroom Music, Ninja Tune, ONErpm, [PIAS], Pony Canyon, Secretly Group, Symphonic Distribution and Sub Pop.
Merlin has deals with 30 digital partners including Alibaba, Boomplay, Deezer, Facebook/Instagram, JioSaavn, KKBox, NetEase, Pandora, Snap, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tencent, TikTok, Triller, Yandex and YouTube Music.
Merlin has offices in London, New York, and Tokyo.
Find out more at: www.merlinnetwork.org
Midnight Choir
The Midnight Choir is Australia’s leading sync rights agency. They source and secure licenses for Independent Australian artists in TV, film, gaming and advertising worldwide. Established in 2014 by Jen Taunton the catalogue has grown to represent over 100 artists, bands, producers and music makers. They have synced music into commercials for Apple, Google, Adidas, Ford, Ikea, and Vodafone and into shows on major US networks ABC, NBC, CBS, CW, Fox, and MTV plus streaming platforms Netflix, Hulu and YouTube Red for shows that include Teen Wolf, How To Get Away With Murder, American Gothic, Heartbeat, Faking It, Shadowhunters, Nobodies, Siren, Dynasty, Insatiable and many more.
Noisehive
Noisehive is a boutique, commission-based music distributor from Melbourne. They pride themselves on being hands-on, offering a premium aggregation service with a personal touch. More than just a website and an FAQ page, these music lovers are keen to help you grow your act and work with you on release strategies & opportunities to make the most of your recordings.
Play MPE is a promotional tool that helps artists, labels, and teams reach industry decision-makers across radio, media, sync & more. With managed distribution lists in 30+ countries, Play MPE provides a clear path to global radio and media distribution without requiring extensive local knowledge.
WARM
By monitoring radio stations worldwide, we track your songs’ airplay in real-time in order to provide you with valuable insights that will help you take your music career to the next level. With WARM you will get a thorough view of your fanbase as well as discover emerging markets.
Songtrust
Songtrust is the world’s largest global royalty collection platform for songwriters and music publishers. Songtrust’s team and technology are designed to simplify music rights management and empower songwriters, producers, artists, managers, labels and publishers to easily access the royalties their songs earn. To provide a global royalty collection, Songtrust maintains the most extensive and accessible publishing networks in the music industry, covering more than 215 countries and territories. Collectively, over 350,000 individual songwriters and music publishers use Songtrust to manage over 3 million song copyrights, music licensing and global royalty collections.
Soundrop
Soundrop is a digital music distribution service built by creators, for creators. Soundrop makes it easy for DIY creators to reach more fans and collect more royalties through integrated cover song licensing, distribution to the world’s top music platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, TikTok, Deezer and more), YouTube ContentID monetization, and automated royalty splits.
The Orchard
The Orchard is a pioneering music, film and video distribution company operating in more than 25 global markets. With a holistic approach to sales and marketing combined with industry-leading technology and operations.
White Sky
White Sky assists artists in the Australian Music Industry handle their finances and manage their tax obligations with a focus on reliability, attention to detail and an ongoing commitment to always go that extra yard. They are the largest Music Business Management & Bookkeeping Company in Australia.
YouTube Music
Friend of AIR, YouTube Music is a music app made for music listening, on top of the magic of YouTube: making the world of music easier to explore and more personalised than ever.
Whether you want to listen, watch or discover, all the ways that music moves you can be found in one place – not just music videos but official albums, singles, remixes, live performances, covers and hard-to-find music you can only get on YouTube