Pandora General Counsel Pushes for Centralized Music Licensing Database
Any comprehensive copyright legislation will “come to fruition” and be effective only if it includes a provision establishing a centralized database of music ownership data, said Pandora General Counsel Steve Bene during an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators that was set to be telecast Saturday. The House and Senate Judiciary committees are expected to ramp up work in the 115th Congress on legislation stemming from House Judiciary's yearslong Copyright Act review. Copyright is one of several policy areas that Pandora has taken an interest in, as it increased its lobbying presence on Capitol Hill, Bene said.
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The lack of a centralized music licensing database is a major problem underlying the current rights administration framework, Bene said. There's “no way for services like us” or others in the music industry “to know with fidelity and certainty” the full ownership information on each song, he said. A central repository could be either a public-private partnership or something fully administered by the federal government, Bene said. It's unclear whether the Copyright Office “is the right place” to house a central music ownership database, but the office should at least “have a big role” in creating it, he said. The CO recommended creating a central music licensing database in its 2015 music licensing study, and industry stakeholders have been working toward a consensus on how a central repository would work (see 1502050055 and 1508270056).
Pandora hasn't gotten a sense the CO is biased against a particular segment of the copyright community based on the company's interactions with the office, Bene said. The 2015 music licensing study contained some language that was “a bit negative” toward Pandora and other streaming services, but the study's recommendations were largely forward-looking “in terms of how they wanted to solve problems” with the existing music licensing regime, Bene said. The CO faced criticism in recent months from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, which said the office's policy recommendations unfairly sided with copyright owners at the expense of consumers and the tech sector (see 1609080084 and 1610260060).
Pandora is more concerned that the CO exceeded its congressional mandate in making some policy recommendations, Bene said. He cited the CO's opposition to the DOJ Antitrust Division's inclusion of language in its closing statement on its review of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music, Inc. consent decrees clarifying the agency's stance in favor of 100 percent licensing rules (see 1602260034).
Pandora has no plans to sell its ownership of KXMZ(FM) Box Elder, South Dakota, despite earlier reports Pandora was considering divesting the radio station based on a March FCC filing (see 1603300056), Bene said. He called reports of a possible sale “misinformation.” But Pandora also has no plans to buy more radio stations in the near future, Bene said. Ownership of KXMZ has been “a really interesting experiment” but “I don't know that we're interested in broadening that experiment,” he said. “What we hoped was that the process of playlisting and providing music to our listeners over the internet radio service would also be a good value add and a good way to revolutionize the way that broadcast radio music was played.”
Bene said he's encouraged by the growth in bipartisan support for the Better Online Ticket Sales (Bots) Act (HR-5104/S-3183), which passed the House and cleared the Senate Commerce Committee in September (see 1609130016). The bill would prevent scalpers from using software to scoop up event tickets and resell them at higher prices. Passage of the bill is necessary because music fans are being “priced out” of the market for tickets when those tickets enter the secondary market, Bene said.