Orfium acquires Soundmouse
Greek-owned startup Orfium is adding another tech company to its portfolio acquiring British-based Soundmouse, further expanding its services in the audiovisual industry.
Founded in 2015, Orfium has developed software that identifies missing copyrights for the use of music tracks on digital platforms and then returns them to their creators.
Soundmouse is a company that provides music reporting services to the broadcasting industry. They develop and provide software that reports music usage directly to broadcasters and collecting societies for them to identify music usage across radio, TV, online and other media.
Using music recognition technology (MRT), Soundmouse monitors key television and radio broadcasts in the UK and across the world to report where it members’ music has been used.
Soundmouse additionally offers cue sheet services on behalf of broadcaster clients around the globe and monitors online music usage.
Rob Wells, Orfium CEO and former Universal Music Group president of Global Digital, hailed the deal as a landmark move for rights holders and media companies, commenting: “Bringing Soundmouse into the Orfium family, we are moving to a place where we can serve the entire entertainment ecosystem across mainstream and digital media. By connecting creators, rights holders, and music users, we can deliver more value to stakeholders across the board.”
Orfium was founded as a start-up company by Chris Mohoney and Drew Delis, while Dimitris Papaspyros and Michalis Petyhakis were later added to the team. It maintains offices in Los Angeles, where it is headquartered, in London and Tokyo, while in Athens it has a research and development center with approximately 180 employees. It already collaborates with major publishers and record companies (Sony Music, Warner Chappell Music etc), while it recently created its subsidiary, Orfium Music Rights Greece.
Sources say the acquisition of Soundmouse was made with a combination of funds from the development of Orfium as well as from funds raised in the context of a financing round.
In 2022 Orfium acquired Breaker, a Japanese marketing and content promotion company, based in Tokyo.
