ASCAP bows royalties monitoring service

Mediaguide takes on Nielsen, Clear Channel

By BEN FRITZ

Looking for a new method to monitor its members' royalties, ASCAP has launched a tracking service to monitor when recorded content is played across different media.

Called Mediaguide, the new company is backed by ASCAP and software company ConneXus, which developed the technology.

Mediaguide enters a market already dominated by Nielsen BDS and Clear Channel's Mediabase. It hopes to differentiate itself with digital identification technology that identifies content without using manual monitoring or having to encode the material.

Venture has so far signed up one client besides ASCAP, interactive CD retailer YES Networks. It hopes to ink media companies that want to keep track of their content, advertisers that want to keep track of competitors and companies looking for data on how often songs and advertisements are being played.

"For many companies in the entertainment industry, this information is the bedrock of business," said Steve Lubin, VP of strategy at Mediaguide.

ASCAP is still hedging its bets, though, continuing to also utilize Nielsen BDS for the time being.