Omnifone appoints Doug Imrie as CEO and announces two new innovative music products

10 March 2016 - Press release

Omnifone launches a unique Global Metering Hub and a world class Music Information Retrieval platform, as a part of a strategic development of its music cloud platform services

Omnifone is pleased to announce the appointment of Doug Imrie as Chief Executive Officer. Previously Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer at Omnifone, Imrie is promoted to CEO with immediate effect. Doug leads the strategic productisation of Omnifone’s music cloud, MusicStation, which includes the development of its Global Metering Hub and Music Information Retrieval platform, the Acoustic Lab. Imrie succeeds Jeff Hughes, who moves to the role of Chairman, after six years as CEO, replacing former chairman Shamil Chandaria.

Imrie joined Omnifone in 2010, bringing with him two decades of digital and technology leadership experience from his previous roles at Sky Deutschland and BSkyB. Imrie has been responsible for the operational day to day activities at Omnifone and steep growth of its music cloud platform and content services. With his appointment as CEO, Doug leads Omnifone’s transition in business strategy, which sees the development of unique, off-the-shelf B2B music products, to cater for new industry demands.

Doug Imrie, CEO Omnifone, commented: “I am hugely excited to undertake to role of Chief Executive at Omnifone.  Whilst we have continued to enjoy powering music services around the globe, we have identified several exciting opportunities to enable digital service providers, rightsholders and other industry stakeholders to select the key components of our music cloud that they need, to build products that enhance their services and operations.” 

Omnifone today announces the Global Metering Hub, a first for the music industry, enabling real-time performance and consumption reporting from digital media distribution platforms to content rightsholders. Operating on a global basis and built using Omnifone’s expertise in deploying and operating worldwide digital music services, the Global Metering Hub simplifies complex multi-territory, multi-rightsholder reporting into a simple API call. Phil Sant, Omnifone’s Chief Engineer commented “We are now in an API economy and this product allows services to outsource their complex reporting needs to our music cloud via a straight forward integration. The Global Metering Hub takes care of all the complex behind-the-scenes heavy lifting, allowing our partners to focus the things that differentiate their service.” The granular performance data supported by the hub, in combination with its extensive song and creator data, can be used as the basis for advanced rightsholder transparency applications, as well as reporting.

Omnifone also launches an innovative Music Information Retrieval platform, the Acoustic Lab, which promotes the analysis of the DNA of a digital music track, creating a library of audio and musical features that provide unique metadata sets. Omnifone offers customers the world leading audio analysis services, which scan across its 55 million track catalogue. The Acoustic Lab can be used to enrich a customer’s end user engagement by providing unique service functionality. The Acoustic Lab is partnered with Queen Mary University London’s Centre for Digital Music, and provides a unique source of music-based research information for academia. The Acoustic Lab supports hundreds of acoustic attributes including audio start/stop, fade-in/out, loudness, hook points, tempo and key. The Acoustic Lab can be used at scale to create fingerprints across the world’s largest collection of studio quality audio.

Jeff Hughes, Chairman, commented: “I’m thrilled to be moving to the role of Chairman, and look forward to continuing my work with Omnifone, its board and shareholders as it grows its advanced music cloud platform capabilities and services.  Doug is the best man to lead Omnifone into its next chapter as it grows to power the music industry in its entirety. Omnifone is committed to driving innovation in the B2B music service arena.”