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Business News Labels & Publishers
US publishers lobbying for more online royalties
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 21 September 2009
The performing rights collecting societies in the US are apparently lobbying Congress to try and get some more royalty income out of download platforms like iTunes. Among the things on which they reckon they might be due royalties are the little 30 second preview clips.
Of course in America, unlike here in the UK, performing and mechanical royalties are managed by totally separate collecting societies. This wasn’t previously much of a problem – because it was tour promoters and broadcasters who paid performing royalties (whenever songs were performed), and record companies who paid mechanical royalties (whenever ‘mechanical copies’ of songs were made – ie records or CDs were pressed).
But in the internet domain it gets confusing because some web music services count as broadcast-style ‘performances’, while others involve a ‘mechanical copy’ being made. Which means website owners have to deal with both kinds of collecting societies for the same music rights. In some areas – streaming for example – both kinds of collecting societies argue they are due a royalty payment, which is fun for the web service providers who negotiate one licence only to find another collecting society knocking at their door wanting money.
Download services like iTunes will only deal with the mechanical royalty people, which is why ASCAP and BMI – the performing royalty societies – are feeling left out. They don’t currently have a relationship with the Apple store, but reckon that certain iTunes products and services – the aforementioned thirty second clips and the inclusion of music in downloadable TV shows and films – should be providing them with a royalty income.
Having already done tortuous deals with the record companies and the mechanical royalty types, Apple are understandably not keen to now sit down with ASCAP and BMI and work out why they should be paying the music publishers more cash. Which is, I think, why the collecting societies are now lobbying Congress for legal clarification as to what performing royalties are due to the publishers on the web.
Whether such lobbying will succeed remains to be seen. Certainly there are plenty of people who will speak out against the introduction of any new online music royalties. Reporting on this lobbying effort, C-net wrote last week: “At a time when many iTunes shoppers are still fuming over Apple’s first-ever increase in song prices, the demands by ASCAP, BMI and other performing-rights groups, would likely lead to more price hikes at iTunes. For many, this would also undoubtedly confirm their perception that those overseeing the music industry are greedy”.
