Warner Music Got a License to Distribute Songs from “Smeshariki”

Warner Music’s Russian office has received an exclusive license to distribute songs from Smeshariki and Malysharikov. The contract implies distribution on the Internet in all countries of the world until 2023, Vedomosti reports with reference to Mark Zavadsky, managing director of Riki Group (creator of the series).

Riki will receive royalties from music sales. The partnership with Warner is expected to expand the representation of music from Smeshariki and Malysharikov on Internet sites all over the world, as well as to strengthen legal protection of content from pirates.

Now about two hundred tracks from both cartoons have been released, and next year the film studio will concentrate on releasing full audio versions of all compositions in English. So far, these songs exist only within the series, and not as independent tracks.

According to experts, cooperation between Russian animation studios and major foreign labels is still taking place as part of an experiment. However, large foreign players began to pay attention to tracks from Russian animated films, as they see huge demand from the audience and the potential for monetization. The amount of royalties in such cases depends on the number of auditions; experts are not yet ready to estimate it.

In August, Soyuzmultfilm signed a similar agreement with another major foreign label – Universal Music Group. The contract concerns compositions from the new projects of Soyuzmultfilm – Orange Cow, Enotki, Prostokvashino.