The collective licensing model around how music royalties are paid...
The collective licensing model around how music royalties are paid to performing rights organizations (PROs) seems to be breaking down, a broadcast lawyer said. With Sony ATV withdrawing from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and BMI,…
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“music services have one more rights organization with whom they have to negotiate in order to play music,” Wilkinson Barker lawyer David Oxenford said in a blog post (http://xrl.us/bobvjj). “And this publishing company is free to set royalty rates as it sees fit, not supervised by a government agency or rate court.” If more large publishing companies withdraw from the PROs, “as some have threatened, then the process becomes even more difficult for services, as they have more groups with whom they have to negotiate,” he said. This fracturing of music licensing makes life more complicated, especially for smaller players in the music universe, he said. Smaller services will have trouble securing all the necessary rights, “and getting access to all music, if the fracturing of music rights continues.” Smaller publishers may be left with the PROs “and end up with higher administrative costs as there are fewer rightsholders among whom those costs can be distributed,” he added.