Big developments look to be on the horizon of music and video streaming specialist One Media IP Group PLC (LON:OMIP).
It’s why Ivan Dunleavy and Michael Grade, two of the UK’s best-known media titans, bought into the group last year said Michael Infante, One Media IP’s chief executive.
Grade is the ex-chief executive of Channel 4 and former chairman of the BBC, ITV and Pinewood Studios, while Dunleavy ran Pinewood for 17 years until its sale in 2016 for £323mln.
Handy return already for power pair
They have not come on board with the intention for OneMedia IP to remain an £8.6mln market cap company, Infante told Proactive.
Indeed, Grade and Dunleavy have already made a handy return on their investment.
Between them, they bought £350,000 worth of shares at 2.5p, an investment that is now worth £1.35mln after the recent spike in the share price to 9.7p.
But it’s not just the involvement of these two big–hitters that is sparking interest in One Media IP.
Infante believes the music industry is in the middle of yet another sea-change in the way content is delivered and his company is front and centre of this movement.
Subscription the way forward
Forget purchases or downloads, subscription services and streaming are the way forward, which plays into the hands of companies with a catalogue of popular songs such as One Media IP.
Infante says it is a myth artists earn less through streaming, it just depends how popular they are.
He cites the 30bn downloads of Ed Sheeran songs over the past year.
Alas, he is not on OneMediaIP’s roster but what it does have it’s a string of artists from the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties and every time one of its songs is streamed it gets paid a small amount.
Spotify, Amazon and Google all take content from the company and many of the playlists you see on these sites will have been specifically compiled by One Media.
WATCH: One Media iP 'carving a new niche' and pursuing big opportunities in publishing
Look for Mothers’ Day’s favourites this weekend, for instance.
The catalogue comprises 250,000 titles and 10,000 hours of videos with content delivered to 600 web-based outlets.
Music is also licensed for background music in films, adverts, video games and so on.
Evidence of the recovery showed through in the latest results.
“Album and track downloading is giving way to the subscription-based and advert-funded method of consumer music buying,” stated Infante.
Revenues rose by 14% to £2.33mln in 2017, while underlying profit [EBITDA] jumped 121% to £536,000.
Broker upgrade
Panmure Gordon upgraded its price target to 15p following the latest results, which confirmed the group and industry is back in recovery mode.
That in part reflected increased confidence that the music cycle has turned, while the presence of Grade and Dunleavy will allow it scale up the business.
The broker expects sales to rise to £ 2.8mln this year with profits of £600,000.
Remember, that is before voice-activated devices such as Amazon’s Echo/Alexa and Google Home reach tipping points in their usage.
At that point, Infante says even the value gap between how much the uploader (Yahoo for instance) makes and the artist that created the content might even start to be closed.
Toe in the tech water
Away from music streaming, One Media IP has also started to explore the tech space.
TCAT, a copyright and content search tool has picked up its first including a contract with an international record label.
The business enables streamed music to be tracked and web stores using it unlawfully to be identified and brought to book.
OneMediaIP is also moving into more customised content.
The group recently bought rights to the Men & Motors series, which it has repackaged as s clips programme, something that generates many more views than the original format says Infante.
Other clever things are also on the go that Infante won’t elaborate on just yet, though music publishing is an area that he does like and that too is enjoying a renaissance due to the streaming surge.
All told, it seems very much a case of watch this space over the next year or so or if you don’t have time maybe ask Alexa to do it for you.