Meltwater, a leading provider of online intelligence solutions delivering big data insights, has announced it has formed a content licensing agreement with the Copyright Agency, acting on behalf of Australia’s market-leading publishers. Publishers include APN News & Media, Fairfax Media, News Corp Australia, Seven West Media, Bauer Media and Pacific Magazines.

The content licensing agreement developed by the Copyright Agency enables business professionals to monitor and analyse premium online news and magazine content, including content behind the paywall. This is via the comprehensive media monitoring platform, Meltwater News.

“We’re very pleased to partner with the Copyright Agency and Australia’s top publishers,” says Meltwater founder and CEO, Jorn Lyseggen. “This agreement adds Australia’s top publisher’s premium content to Meltwater’s market-leading international source base and further positions Meltwater as a comprehensive provider of news monitoring and media intelligence in the market.

“Earlier this year, Meltwater established content partnerships in Australia with LexisNexis for licensed print coverage and TVEyes for broadcast coverage. We actively pursue strategic partnerships to enable us to serve clients locally as well as internationally,” Lyseggen said.

Copyright Agency director of commercial licensing, Ross McCaul, said, “Having Meltwater come in under this new scraper-licence framework is a great result and enhances competition in the market. It shows Meltwater’s intention to respect the copyright of publishers.”

Copyco is the publishers’ joint venture company responsible for group copyright licensing of news masthead material. The Copyright Agency led the negotiations between Meltwater and CopyCo.

Gail Hambly, group general counsel at Fairfax Media and chair of Copyco, said, “The publishers are very pleased to have been able to work together with Meltwater to produce a licence agreement that is beneficial to all parties.”

Widely used by professionals in small to medium-sized businesses to major global corporations, the Meltwater News platform provides in-depth media monitoring and analytics tools to help Meltwater’s clients follow the success of product launches and media campaigns, and track their competition. The Meltwater News platform analyses and delivers insights from media around the world.

A leading global provider of media monitoring and social media monitoring solutions, Meltwater’s more localised approach and increased focus on the Australian market is gaining traction. Revenue growth in Australia has increased by 45 per cent, indicating the increasing demand for online-focused media monitoring services.