This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Labels & Publishers Legal
EC Commissioner welcomes moves in European collecting society community – well, mainly French moves
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 27 May 2009
The European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has welcomed progress in the collecting society sector regarding the provision of pan-European licences for digital music.
As much previously reported, European officials have been in conflict with the collecting society community for a while about the lack of pan-European licences. Officials say that a system whereby providers of digital music services must get a separate licence from each national collecting society is anti-competitive, because the collecting society in each territory effectively has a monopoly.
They want each society to provide pan-European licences that give cross-border digital service providers the rights to use both songs from their own catalogue, but also the catalogues of other societies; licences which would be enabled through reciprocal agreements between competing societies, and/or pan-European agreements between publishers and societies. Aside from making things much easier for anyone wanting to launch a pan-European digital music service, such licences would force societies around Europe to compete with each other, thus ending the monopoly concerns.
Many collecting societies, while not necessarily opposing the concept of pan-European licences, dislike having such systems forced on them by regulators, while others argue that by forcing collecting societies to compete in this way the bigger societies will benefit to the detriment of smaller ones, meaning songwriting communities in smaller European markets lose out. They also fear the royalty rates received by individual songwriters will be pushed down as societies are forced to cut their rates in order to compete.
Anyway, deals are being done to allow more pan-European licensing, and it’s those deals Kroes has welcomed. In particular a move by French collecting society SACEM, who have said they are ready to entrust other collecting societies with their repertoire for pan-European licensing, while offering to represent other societies’ repertoire on a non-exclusive basis. That’s the kind of commitment Kroes wants every European society to make.
Commenting on those and other developments, Kroes said yesterday: “There is a clear willingness expressed by major players in the online distribution of music in Europe to tackle the many barriers which prevent consumers from fully benefiting from the opportunities that the internet provides. I therefore encourage the major players, in particular publishers and collecting societies, to move quickly to adapt their licensing solutions to the online environment. I will review progress at the next meeting of the roundtable that I will organise shortly with other major players in the online music market”.
