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"Merlin, the non-profit company setup to handle the rights of independent music labels, has succeeded in becoming the equivalent of the fifth largest record company with the success of just their first month of operation.\nYou may remember that we first discussed Merlin all the way back in January 2007, so this success has been a long time in the making for the international rights holder.\u00A0 For those who may not remember what exactly it is the company aims to do, it's a fairly easy idea: Merlin sees a strength in a centralized, concentrated voice for independent record labels when it comes to negotiating for rights.\nIn just the first month of operation, Merlin has made agreements with over 12,000 independent music labels to represent them to distribution situations like YouTube.\u00A0 Instead of thousands of labels all jumping through the same hoops as each other, Merlin will handle all of the rights issues as one entity, simplifying things for everyone in the process.\u00A0 With that many rights now under their umbrella,this makes Merlin the equivalent of the fifth biggest record company, though they are not looking to turn a profit and simply negotiate en masse for the smaller companies, giving them one unified voice as opposed to many."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/05/05/merlin-becomes-fifth-biggest-music-rights-holder/>