Jaxsta and Merlin forge 'dream' agreement

Jaxsta and Merlin have struck a deal.

Less than a month after launching a public beta version, Jaxsta has entered into a commercial data access agreement with Merlin, the independents' digital music agency.

What that means is Merlin's 800 members, which represents tens of thousands of record labels from 63 countries, have a direct pipeline to feed data into the Jaxsta platform. This, in turn, will improve its accuracy as the go-to resource for all things music-related.

The pact is nothing less than a "dream come true" for Jaxsta’s CEO Jacqui Louez Schoorl, who has guided the project since inception.

"We are very excited to announce this important partnership with Merlin," she says in a statement announcing the pact.

"The independent music industry has supported our journey from the beginning, and we have been proud to support independent music through a myriad of initiatives including our memberships with A2IM, AIM and AIR. To be able to represent the wider community via a partnership with Merlin is a dream come true."

Charles Caldas

Charles Caldas, the Australian-born CEO of Merlin added, “Delivering accurate and transparent data reporting is of crucial importance both to Merlin and our growing global membership of independent labels and distributors.

"This partnership with Jaxsta will help ensure our members’ repertoire is properly accredited, wherever in the world it is accessed and enjoyed.”

Established in 2015, Jaxsta is the world’s largest source of official credit information for artists, musicians, songwriters, producers, engineers and other members of the music community. In short, its the IMDB for the music scene, its data content-owner supplied rather than crowd-sourced.

Upon its launch of the open beta last month, Jaxsta’s database boasted more than 100 million credits across 25 million webpages, reflecting the music credits of 19 million recordings.

Jaxsta has existing partner agreements with a host of music companies and trade bodies, including Sony Music Entertainment, the RIAA, Warner Music, Universal Music, Mushroom Music Publishing, and ARIA.

The company boasts access to the credits of more than 80% of global music releases, a stat that should push closer to the 100% mark thanks to the new deal with Merlin.