Dubai: Social media portals might have been all the rage with users and investors. But it may be time to spare a listen to digital music streaming services.

In the UAE, portals that aspire to be a Spotify or Deezer are yet to show up on the music lover’s radar screens. But a service provider targeting streaming services to businesses is trying to find its groove.

“The majority of our existing clients have been new outlets; but they had approached other music providers and chosen to go with us,” said Michael Ross, president of Groove-Master, which pipes an eclectic selection of music to institutional clients such as hotel properties and food and beverage (F&B) outlets. “It seems that the attraction of having licensed music on the premises has been a major factor in their decision-making process.

“As for ‘converting’ potential clients, we have had a great response from some users who have said they will consider us once their existing contracts expire, but because of the ‘grey-area’ surrounding licensing, some are still hesitant about what to believe. In short, however, our target clients thus far have been very keen to promote an ethical approach to their music policy.”

Company officials say that profitability will feature in the near horizon. So far, the company has operated on the funds put up by its three founders.

Did acquiring the licenses take up most of the upfront costs? “The start-up costs in our case were dominated by publishing and licensing, yes, but also on technology,” said Ross. “We built an online interface which not only makes it easy for us and the client to schedule, manage and stream music (with an advanced buffering system to allow uninterrupted streams), but has the functionality to report the amount of usage to labels according to their specifications.

“This is something that has been very helpful in securing deals with our music providers and collection societies.”

There is an existing agreement with Sony Music, which allows access to one million titles. It is working on alliances with other labels, an official said.

Groove-Master offers two contractual terms, one being the ‘blank’ license which covers performance rights in public spaces, and ‘synch’ or ‘synchronized’ licence for music that is set to a visual performance, say, a movie, TV show or television commercial.

The latter is calculated based on the specific use of a piece of music and how the value of that music can be determined by its setting, duration, frequency and the position of the music relative to the visual performance.

A ‘blanket’ licence gives users specific rights to content within a catalogue of music (as determined by a record label) and does not pertain to any one individual piece of music.

“We have been fortunate enough to secure a deal with Sony Music; we also signed an agreement with Music Box international for their Arabic and Islamic catalogue giving us access to relevant artists from this region and a couple of other independent labels giving us access to over 65,000 tracks,” said Ross.