Name: Chantal Epp
Position: Founder & CEO
Company: ClicknClear
Website: https://www.clicknclear.com/
About Chantal Epp and ClicknClear
ClicknClear is an award-winning technology platform solving complex music licensing issues faced by choreographed performance sports, where music is integral to the routine (such as gymnastics, figure skating, artistic swimming and more). As the founder and CEO, my goal is to deliver a frictionless relationship between the music industry and those sports, to ultimately ensure that sports can protect themselves from the threat of copyright infringement, and music creators and rightsholders are properly rewarded for the use of their work with an additional, sustainable income stream.
In 2016, I found myself in a unique position to merge my two passions, cheerleading and music, after the cheerleading industry suffered a lawsuit from Sony Music.
With a background in music licensing and music production for choreographed sports, and being a world champion cheerleader and pioneer of disability-inclusive cheerleading, I knew I could solve this problem, which, it transpired, was shared by all other sports that use music as part of their routines.
The challenge is that the specialist rights needed by these sports – to edit and adapt music for choreography – are not included with more easily available licenses such as public performance, personal music purchases, or platforms like Spotify and YouTube. The music industry typically licenses this type of use on a case-by-case basis. With around one billion of these types of licenses needed by choreographed performance sports every year, the need for a tech-led solution was clear.
In response, we have built an online platform and unique suite of technologies – including rights management, licensing and license verification software – to help address copyright infringement for sports globally, protecting the users of music and remunerating its creators.
On the music side, we have ex3cuted deals with thousands of record labels and music publishers, ranging from major global corporations such as Universal, Sony, and Warner, to independents of all sizes worldwide, pulling together the specialist set of copyright licenses required by choreographed performance sports into a single license agreement.
Our rights management database handles the ingestion and rights matching of around 30 million copyrights. In addition, the platform’s License Verification System (LVS) uses automated music recognition and license verification (using AI) to allow administrators to manage music licensing in their sports at a global, national, regional and local level.
We have made rapid progress since the Covid-19 pandemic. Most recently we closed multi-year deals with the International Gymnastics Federation and the International Skating Union, which see ClicknClear become the approved music licensing platform for the global figure skating and gymnastics communities, joining other organisations including the US NFHS (representing ~20k high schools participating in dance, cheerleading, and marching band).
In 2024 we are rolling out those new global partnerships – gymnasts and figure skaters from grassroots to elite level will use music from ClicknClear’s platform for their routines, while sports administrators will use it to verify and enforce music licensing worldwide. We have a strong pipeline of sports that will sign up in the coming year, and our music catalogue will continue to grow.
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