Luminate Acquires Artist-ID and Metadata Company Quansic, Plans to Take ‘Music Data Offerings to the Next Level’

Luminate (formerly P-MRC Data) has announced the acquisition of artist-identification and metadata-optimization platform Quansic.

The purchasing company, which provides sales stats for Billboard’s charts, unveiled the Quansic deal via a formal release today. While the buyer opted against disclosing the transaction’s financials (Billboard, connected to Luminate via Penske Media, didn’t pinpoint related details either), it did indicate that the newly acquired operation boasts “the world’s largest artist identification database.”

Said database (dubbed “ISNI eXtended,” or ISNI-X, per Quansic’s website) encompasses north of 2.5 million ISNIs as well as some 203 million music identifiers, according to Luminate, which is absorbing Quansic’s team “effective immediately.” Founder and chief scientist FX Nuttall is set to continue leading the latter business.

Notably, Luminate when explaining the motivation behind the purchase specifically cited “Quansic’s expertise in the harmonization of metadata across record labels, streaming platforms, song publishers, and artist services within the music ecosystem.”

A cursory examination of the aforementioned Quansic website shows that the entity offers ISNI, ISRC, and BOWI registrations alike. And the highlighted ISNI-X database seems to contain everything from artists’ credits to name variants (different languages, nicknames, etc.) and streaming identifiers to relationships with other acts (band memberships and more).

Moving forward, Quansic intends to keep on bolstering its core metadata and identification offering, which will ultimately be incorporated into Luminate’s forthcoming revamped platform, per the involved parties. This platform, Luminate reiterated, is expected to release in “several phases over the coming months.”

Addressing the play in a statement, Luminate CEO Rob Jonas, whose company’s sales-calculation changes are still eliciting pushback from vinyl groups, emphasized the perceived potential of Quansic to help take “music data offerings to the next level.”

“We warmly welcome them into the Luminate family and look forward to collaborating and taking our music data offerings to the next level,” Jonas relayed in part, “especially as we close the gap between the disparate data that labels and publishers have historically relied on to drive their businesses forward.”

Nuttall, formerly a music-metadata higher-up with YouTube/Google, struck a similar tone in separate remarks, making clear the sale’s significance with regard to “advancing our vision to unify data in the music industry” and unlocking “unprecedented value” in the process.

In related news – referring, that is, to broader issues in music metadata and credits – December saw the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) tap companies including Jaxsta and Salt to join its “Supplemental Matching Network.”

As suggested by this title, the partnership initiative aims to more effectively match compositional royalties; the Copyright Office requested information about the arrangement and a variety of other subjects last month in connection with the first “periodic review” of the MLC’s designation.