OpenPlay Partners with S4 Capital’s Monks as OpenPlay Signature

OpenPlay Partners with S4 Capital’s Monks as OpenPlay Signature, Accelerating Innovation from Years to Months and Expanding Beyond Music

December 06, 2024 (Santa Monica, CA) – OpenPlay, provider of the music industry’s leading platform for asset and catalog management, today announced a new partnership with Monks, the operating brand of S4 Capital and a leading digital-first, data-driven, advertising, marketing, and technology services company. The partnership brings together OpenPlay’s proven content and rights management capabilities with Monks’ expertise in scaling enterprise-grade platforms, opening up new customization opportunities that will empower media organizations to accelerate digital transformation.

Under the partnership, known as OpenPlay Signature, OpenPlay will work with Monks’ growing Media & Entertainment Technology practice to enable rapid deployment of cutting-edge technologies across the media, entertainment, games and sports industries. Such tech deployments include AI-driven workflows, fan engagement experiences, ecommerce, and Web3 integration, thereby streamlining operations for clients and cutting implementation times from years to months for new and custom solutions. This unique combination of platform-specific knowledge and broad industry experience, supported by a team of specialists across marketing and technology services, will enable OpenPlay clients to drive efficiency, unlock new revenue streams, and further improve the accuracy of content and rights data, ensuring that artists, creators, and rights-holders receive the credit and payments they deserve while maximizing the exploitation of their IP globally.

“Yesterday’s technology should never hold back today’s media enterprises. That’s why our clients choose OpenPlay: we work with them to simplify complex rights and content management,” said Edward Ginis, Co-Founder and Chief Client Officer of OpenPlay. “Now with Monks onboard, OpenPlay Signature will build on that history of success while providing a foundation for further innovation at breakneck speed, allowing us to create and implement customized solutions in a matter of months, not years, benefitting our full client roster.”

OpenPlay Signature also marks a major step in OpenPlay’s expansion from its foundation in recorded music into global music publishing and the broader media industry, with Monks building out OpenPlay’s API-driven content management and rights administration platform to allow companies beyond the music industry to ensure accurate data and get creators paid faster and more accurately. Monks’ deep knowledge of media technology, with past successes in developing streaming platforms for HBO, Hulu, and PlayStation, will enable OpenPlay to deliver rapid solutions and custom applications to clients globally — transforming what was once a multi-year process into a matter of months.

“Through OpenPlay Signature, we’re working to expand the fight to address one of the music industry’s most significant pain points — outdated, complex data infrastructure — to the wider media industry,” said Adonya Ourshalimian, Partner at Monks. “Together with OpenPlay, we’re freeing global media organizations to focus on what matters most: creating compelling content and engaging experiences for their audiences.” 

About OpenPlay

OpenPlay is the music industry’s leading asset management platform, trusted by major labels and independents alike to manage their catalogs — it bridges the gap between content creation, metadata management, assets, rights, and delivery. Designed and built from the ground up by music industry experts, OpenPlay services customers that manage the largest libraries of valuable media assets in the world. OpenPlay’s coupling of an intuitive interface with an extremely powerful enterprise toolset places it in a class above its competitors. With offerings for multiple different industry verticals, their entire suite of applications has solutions for every company no matter their size. Learn more about OpenPlay at openplay.co.

About Monks

Monks is the global, purely digital, data-driven, unitary operating brand of S4 Capital plc. With a legacy of innovation and specialized expertise, Monks combines an extraordinary range of global marketing and technology services to accelerate business possibilities and redefine how brands and businesses interact with the world. Its integration of systems and workflows delivers unfettered content production, scaled experiences, enterprise-grade technology and data science fueled by AI—managed by the industry’s best and most diverse digital talent—to help the world’s trailblazing companies outmaneuver and outpace their competition.

Monks was named a Contender in The Forrester Wave™: Global Marketing Services. It has remained a constant presence on Adweek’s Fastest Growing lists (2019-23), ranks among Cannes Lions’ Top 10 Creative Companies (2022-23) and is the only partner to have been placed in AdExchanger’s Programmatic Power Players list every year (2020-24). In addition to being named Adweek’s first AI Agency of the Year (2023), Monks has been recognized by Business Intelligence in its 2024 Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Awards program in three categories: the Individual category, Organizational Winner in AI Strategic Planning and AI Product for its service Monks.Flow. Monks has also garnered the title of Webby Production Company of the Year (2021-24), won a record number of FWAs and has earned a spot on Newsweek’s Top 100 Global Most Loved Workplaces 2023.

About S4 Capital

S4Capital plc (SFOR.L) is the tech-led, new age/new era digital advertising, marketing and technology services company, established by Sir Martin Sorrell in May 2018.

Our strategy is to build a purely digital advertising and marketing services business for global, multinational, regional, and local clients, and millennial-driven influencer brands. This will be achieved by integrating leading businesses in two synchronised practices: Marketing services and Technology services, along with an emphasis on ‘faster, better, cheaper, more’ execution in an always-on consumer-led environment, with a unitary structure.

The Company now has approximately 7,300 people in 33 countries with approximately 80% of net revenue across the Americas, 15% across Europe, the Middle East and Africa and 5% across Asia-Pacific. The longer-term objective is a geographic split of 60%:20%:20%. At the Group’s last full year results, Content accounted for approximately 60% of net revenue, Data&Digital Media 24% and Technology Services 16%. The long-term objective for the practices is a split of 50%:25%:25%.

Sir Martin was CEO of WPP for 33 years, building it from a £1 million ‘shell’ company in 1985 into the world’s largest advertising and marketing services company, with a market capitalisation of over £16 billion on the day he left. Prior to that Sir Martin was Group Financial Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Company Plc for nine years.

OpenPlay Media Contacts

Laurie Jakobsen, Jaybird Communications, 646-484-6764, laurie@jaybirdcom.com

Bill Greenwood, Jaybird Communications, 609-221-2374, bill@jaybirdcom.com

Monks Media Contact
Sarah Murray, 402-658-9341, sarah.murray@monks.com

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