Just when you hope that the streaming royalty issue is settling down, we might be headed back to start all over.
A little explanation – This is NOT the “performance tax” issue. Radio has always had to pay the composers and lyricists for using their music. ASCAP represents that part of the business. The “Performance Tax” that radio stations don’t pay for their radio stations is the royalty paid to the musicians.
Well, Yahoo and Real took ASCAP to court and won a victory in an appeals court. The lower court had set the rate at 2.5%. The appeals court has sent it back down to the lower court to try again. Note that this doesn’t mean the rate is too high – it means the appeals court found that the lower court’s decision was unclear.
Here we go again!
What I can’t understand is why radio sould pay anything to anybody, If it wasn’t for radio, the musician or artitst would not have any sales for recorded music that was heard on radio to obtain royalties, what about musicians playing or preforming re-make music from a deceased composer/lyrisists ? who get’s their royalties ? ASCAP just another money grabbing joke.
One of the problems with the royalties in streaming has been tracking down the artists. Since the variety of music people play is so much larger, really obscure music gets played by artists either dead or who haven’t kept in touch because they never expected to see any income.
Protecting Copyrights is a power specifically enumerated in the Constitution. Often those rights are sold to a third party. Michael Jackson at some point acquired the rights to the Beatles’ music, for instance. Over time, banks and Sony acquired an interest in the catalog (along with Jackson’s own work)