June 20, 2007

By By Antony Bruno, Denver

Getty Images is getting into the commercial music licensing game through a $42 million acquisition of online service Pump Audio.

Pump Audio is an online repository of pre-cleared, pre-priced music featuring a variety of independent and unsigned artists. Anyone from individuals to ad agencies can browse through the 700,000 tracks and license the desired song through a totally automated system.

Getty Images plans to integrate the service into its existing Web sites, which include photo and video licensing services. Within months, according to Getty co-founder and CEO Jonathan Klein, Getty customers will be able to bundle their photo, video and music licenses from the same site. Additionally, the company's sales team will include music licensing in their various corporate outreach programs.

"There isn't a major corporation, ad agency or broadcast who is not already a customer of ours," Klein says. "Our ambition moving into music is part of an overall thrust to be a digital media company."

Pump Audio currently charges as low as $5 a song for a simple podcast license to $50,000 for a nationwide ad campaign. Klein says that pricing model will remain intact for Pump Audio's relatively unknown acts, but that prices will increase as the company includes content from both major labels and established acts which whom it hopes to strike direct deals.

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