Almost certainly the highest cost line item for U.S. music-based online radio services is the royalty that such services pay for rights to the sound recordings they play, with those rates set every five years in a tribunal conducted by… Continue Reading
The Copyright Royalty Board’s 2018 ruling for mechanical royalties to be paid by streaming services has been on the books for awhile, but it will be returning to court this week. Four streaming services filed appeals against the ruling in March, and the U.S. Court of Appeals will begin hearing arguments from the legal counsel for Amazon and Spotify today. Continue Reading
Several streaming services drew the ire of songwriting groups when they moved to appeal the mechanical royalty rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board. Although Amazon, Google, and Pandora are also participating in the appeal, Spotify has been shouldering the bulk of the critique. Continue Reading
The Copyright Royalty Board rates set for 2018 through 2022 are soon to face a legal challenge. A group of streaming and technology platforms — including Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon — filed notices that they intend to appeal the mechanical statutory licensing rates for that period. Continue Reading
Years after the decision, SoundExchange is still pushing for an appeal of the Copyright Royalty Board’s determination of webcasting rates for the 2016-2020 period. Legal expert David Oxenford shares some background on how appeals courts review these cases and breaks down the latest ruling. Continue Reading
As the new Copyright Royalty Board rate ruling sinks in today, we look at how it might affect Pandora. Using the company’s 2017 Annual Report and financials from the most recent earnings report, it becomes clear that the new rates will not apply to most of Pandora’s royalty cost, and that the simple 44% CRB rate hike is actually more complicated … and lower. Continue Reading
The Copyright Royalty Board has announced the new rates for mechanical royalties to be paid by streaming music services. As announced on Jan. 27, streaming platforms will pay out royalties to songwriters and composers as a share of their revenue. By 2022, the share for mechanical royalties will be 15.1% of the streaming platform’s revenue. Read on for the full rate ruling and reactions from both publishers’ and songwriters’ organizations. Continue Reading
The Copyright Royalty Board recently made its ruling for royalty rates to be paid by Sirius XM in 2018-2022. David Oxenford lays out the known details of the determination along with some important notes about the appeal for the webcasting rates set for 2016. Continue Reading
The Copyright Royalty Board judges have set the new royalty rates and terms for Sirius XM. The company will pay 15.5% of gross revenues for the period of January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2022. That’s a 40% increase from the 11% share Sirius XM has been paying for royalties. Continue Reading
The Copyright Royalty Board has issued its cost of living adjustments for royalty rates in 2018. The new rate for ad-supported, non-subscription music streaming services in 2018 is $0.0018. Paid subscription services will pay $0.0023 per performance. The previous rates were $0.0017 for ad-supported and $0.0022 for subscription. Continue Reading
Last week we began receiving notes from webcasting clients of two large hosting companies, Radionomy and StreamLicensing, noting that recent changes and communications had troubled their webcast stations. The two situations are coinciding in time, but are unrelated — except both are about music licensing. Continue Reading
Iconic webcasting platform Live365, which went out of business in January, 2016, and reemerged under new ownership in August, has announced that the platform is now open to webcaster sign-ups following a limited roll-out that began in January. Continue Reading