Business News Education & Events The Great Escape 2015

CMU Business Editor shares the background to music licensing strand at The Great Escape

By | Published on Monday 30 March 2015

The Great Escape

CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke has expanded on the CMU Insights conference strand Music Licensing: Explained At Last!, which will take place during The Great Escape this May. Details of the strand – which is supported by PPL and PRS For Music – were announced last week, with BASCA, IFPI, CISAC, Clintons, Believe Digital and CI amongst the organisations due to take part.

Explaining the rationale for the strand, Cooke references the artist survey on streaming presented by Dan Le Sac at last year’s TGE: “A key theme running throughout was that artists felt decidedly uninformed about how labels and publishers were licensing these platforms, how royalties were being calculated, and what happened to the money once the DSPs had paid the rights owners. Many felt that they had been too often left out of discussions about the future of digital music”.

He goes on: “Ultimately artists and songwriters don’t need to know the minute details, and the basic rule is quite simple: to succeed you need people to spend more of their time online streaming your tracks. But when an industry is in flux, all stakeholders should take part in the debate, and that means that at this stage all parties should know a little more about what is going on”.

“Which brings us to Music Licensing: Explain At Last! Over this one-day strand we will explain – for artists and songwriters, producers and managers, labels and publishers, licensees, and anyone else who needs to know – how music licensing works across the board, and where the money is being made, from physical sales and sync, to public performance and broadcast income, to the various types of digital services”.

“And then – with reps from the record industry, music publishing and the legal profession on board – we will explain how digital platforms are being licensed, how royalties are calculated, and what happens to the money once the DSPs have paid the rights owners”.

Which will in turn lead to the big ‘digital pie’ debate that has become increasingly noisy in recent months. Vick Bain from BASCA will explain why songwriters have become particularly vocal in this domain, “but all sides will be represented” Cooke adds, “as we consider all the arguments and, perhaps more importantly, beyond The Great Escape stage, what is the best forum where this debate can take place day-to-day, so that all voices are heard, but the music industry doesn’t have to fight its internal battles too much in the public eye”.

Read the full trends piece that explains and previews the music licensing conference strand at TGE here. Full details about Music Licensing: Explained At Last! is online here, and to access the event make sure you get your TGE delegate’s pass here.



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