qwireNews
Clearing the Desks, Changing the Industry: Qwire Builds Software to Transform How Music for Picture Gets Licensed, Managed, and Reported
The soundtracks to the shows and films we love have a secret. They were born out of stacks of paper overwhelming desks, dotted with Post-Its and White Out. They sprang from personal spreadsheets that only one person can find or navigate; from data entered numerous times into multiple spreadsheets, keyed into multiple software applications, and stored in multiple paper files. They involved negotiations with little to no historical information to reference -- and mistakes that can cost in the six figures and delays that meant payment headaches for writers, publishers, and music labels. These experiences are a regular part of licensing music for picture and reporting usages for the purposes of properly paying out royalties, a $4 billion-a-year industry with more than 2 million musical works licensed annually. They are challenges music supervisors, composers, PROs, music clearance and licensing teams, and film and broadcast execs grapple with every day. Qwire, a SaaS firm founded by…
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Qwire Expands Board of Directors, Adds Two Prominent Media Leaders
Qwire, the SaaS company aiming to transform music for picture, has added two highly experienced media executives and thinkers to its Board of Directors, Joy Marcus and Howard Appelbaum. Joy Marcus is a Venture Partner at Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) where she focuses on digital media and commerce. She has served as a VP of International Business Development at MTV, SVP at Time Warner, GM for North America at Daily Motion, and EVP, GM of Digital Video at Condé Nast. Joy teaches entrepreneurship at Princeton University, beginning in 2014 as a James Wei Visiting Professor. In 2014, Joy received a Women of Power and Influence Award from the National Organization for Women (NOW). "Qwire is set to be an industry leader in transforming music-for-media to the benefit of all parties — production studios, writers/composers, music publishers, and Performance Rights Organizations," says Marcus. "I am very excited to be part of this adventure as a member of Qwire's Board." Since 2011, Howard…
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Qwire, the music-for-picture licensing and cue sheet reporting software firm, receives $2m+ in funding
Qwire (qwire.com), creator of SaaS software to streamline royalty reporting and licensing for music-for-picture, has received over $2 million in additional funding from current and new investors. This will expand the New York and Los Angeles-based company's sales efforts and accelerate development and enhancement of its cue sheet reporting tools. "This new investment demonstrates investors' confidence in Qwire and in our software's ability to transform music post production and royalty reporting," said founder and CEO Scott Freiman. "This funding will allow us to take the company to the next level, as we continue to license qwireClear to major film/TV studios, and we bring our next-generation cue sheet management and reporting software – qwireCue – to market." Jerry Labowitz, former Director of Equities Research for the Americas for Merrill Lynch, agreed: "Qwire is seeing interest from a large and growing range of companies in the music-for-media business. I was happy to participate…