GoDigital Music names Sebastian Mair to lead Asia-Pacific push with Pony Canyon deal
GoDigital Music has appointed Sebastian Mair as President of APAC and signed Japan's Pony Canyon to a YouTube rights deal.
The company confirmed both steps on 6 October. It described them as the first moves in a wider expansion plan across the Asia-Pacific region, Music Business Worldwide.
The Pony Canyon agreement sits with AdShare, a GoDigital Music company. Under the deal, AdShare will provide YouTube monetisation and intellectual property rights management across Pony Canyon's catalogue. In plain terms, that means tracking where the company's videos and music are used on YouTube, collecting the advertising money they generate and making sure the rights holders are paid.
Pony Canyon is headquartered in Tokyo. It produces and distributes music, film, home video, anime and games.
GoDigital Music said Pony Canyon represents a catalogue of more than 100,000 assets in Japanese entertainment. An asset here can be a recording, a video or another piece of owned content that can earn money online.
Mair will lead strategy and commercial activity across APAC. That includes developing growth plans spanning multiple countries.
His remit also covers joint ventures, minority investments and distribution partnerships. He will also lead work to expand catalogue acquisitions and rights monetisation activity, the business of buying music rights and earning revenue from them.
His background includes work with Creativeman Productions, Fujipacific Music, Live Nation Japan, AEG Presents and Ubisoft. That spans concert promotion, music publishing, live events and games.
GoDigital Music's Founder and Chairman is Jason Peterson. GoDigital Music itself sits within GoDigital Media Group, a privately held multinational whose other business units include Sound Royalties, GoDigital Brands and GoDigital IP Funding.
For viewers, this means little changes on the surface. The same clips and songs stay up. The difference is behind the scenes, in who collects the revenue they create.
