Firstcom merging with Universal Production Music

[tyrannical bastard 4060]

Well, since this involves two companies that are heavily involved with local stations (and even being a source of news music here and there), This is a blockbuster move on the production music end....

https://www.firstcom.com/en-us/campaigns/the-new-universal-production-music

 

I don't recall if the combined company has any news music holdings like WarnerChappell absorbing Gari & 615, but even Universal has absorbed major libraries like Network and Killer Tracks over the years.

[dpb 37]

There is really a trend towards consolidation in the production music and news music industry. I wonder if there is a good explanation for why now.

[qunewsguy 378]

As a promo producer this really excites me LOL

[noggi 604]

1 hour ago, qunewsguy said:

As a promo producer this really excites me LOL

I’ll be happy if someone goes through and cleans up these libraries. I don’t know about you but 90% of the tracks are usually just awful. Firstcom was impossible to search and find what I was looking for. 

[qunewsguy 378]

1 hour ago, noggi said:

I’ll be happy if someone goes through and cleans up these libraries. I don’t know about you but 90% of the tracks are usually just awful. Firstcom was impossible to search and find what I was looking for. 

It took me a while to figure out which labels are worth checking and which are worth skipping altogether. They've gotten better over the last couple years overall!

[tyrannical bastard 4060]

3 hours ago, qunewsguy said:

It took me a while to figure out which labels are worth checking and which are worth skipping altogether. They've gotten better over the last couple years overall!

I've been using Firstcom for almost 15 years.  It's gotten better over the period of time (especially as the agreements have become broader).  I wonder if current customers will keep access to their respective libraries and newer customers will have access to everything.  There are parts of Network and Killer Tracks I'd love to finally be able to use!

[sanewsguy 514]

Universal already owned Firstcom (and had since around 2007 or so; https://www.firstcom.com/en-us/our-story), so they're just doing what they should have done years ago: combining the former Killer Tracks library and the Firstcom library under one umbrella. 

In other words, not too much to see here.

[qunewsguy 378]

Well from a FirstCom user perspective, the only thing that has changed is that you now log in through UPM. No access to new labels or albums post-merger.

[noggi 604]

I guess this is where I’m confused… should I now be seeing Killer Tracks stuff when I search? They don’t show up as one of the labels on the Universal site. 

[qunewsguy 378]

10 minutes ago, noggi said:

I guess this is where I’m confused… should I now be seeing Killer Tracks stuff when I search? They don’t show up as one of the labels on the Universal site. 

Nope. If you search when you're not logged in you'll see everything. If you search or browse once you log in you'll only see what you had under the FirstCom site. My previous FirstCom license worked the same way. We only had access to certain labels. You could see everything without being logged in but as soon as you signed in you could only see what you could actually access.

[noggi 604]

Oof. Makes sense I guess.. would love to get my hands on the Killer Tracks library, but I won an Emmy with help from a track from Universal so I can’t complain too much.