Spotify, Google, Pandora, Amazon Go To US Appeals Court To Overturn Royalty Increase (variety.com) 35
Spotify, Google, Pandora and Amazon have teamed up to appeal a controversial ruling by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board that, if it goes through, would increase payouts to songwriters by 44%, Variety is reporting. From the report: A joint statement from the first three of those companies reads: "The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), in a split decision, recently issued the U.S. mechanical statutory rates in a manner that raises serious procedural and substantive concerns. If left to stand, the CRB's decision harms both music licensees and copyright owners. Accordingly, we are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review the decision."
The four companies all filed with the court separately. Sources say that Apple Music is alone among the major streaming services in not planning to appeal -- as confirmed by songwriters' orgs rushing to heap praise on Apple while condemning the seemingly unified front of the other digital companies.
The four companies all filed with the court separately. Sources say that Apple Music is alone among the major streaming services in not planning to appeal -- as confirmed by songwriters' orgs rushing to heap praise on Apple while condemning the seemingly unified front of the other digital companies.
How does it (Score:2)
harn copyright owners
Re:How does it (Score:4, Insightful)
More forced royalties makes the services more expensive to run, which in turn is making the subscription more expensive.
A more expensive subscription means lots of users will drop out and go back to pirating, meaning absolutely no revenue from them for copyright owners. Models probably predict that more people would leave than is offset by the increased revenue.
The notable difference between Apple Music and the other services is that Apple never cared for it and can afford to run it at a loss.
exactly (Score:3)
Presumably the purpose of copyrights is the public good, not the enrichment of anyone.
there are some ways I can think of that this works
1. Reward the copyright holders (via roylaties). The purpose of the reward is to encourage the copyright holder to share with the public their materials and perhaps encourage these creative people to make more things the public needs/wants.
2. It enables the creation of a market place. Market places are efficient methods of distribution. Without them the impact on the pu
Re: (Score:3)
Presumably the purpose of copyrights is the public good, not the enrichment of anyone.
Eh, well, the purpose of copyrights is the public good, yes, achieved via the potential enrichment of someone as an incentive to produce a work and make it available to the public.
Re: (Score:3)
It means that the copyright owners have to pay the artists more rather than keeping the profit for themselves.
"Copyright owner" is generally trotted out to make it sound like the publisher, that usually owns the copyright, is actually the artist(s) that originally created the work.
Re: How does it (Score:1)
This is 44% increase on a .001% share? Royalties are ridiculously low for living artist who created the content. It is ridiculously high for copyright owners who acquired the rights.
Greed vs. greed (Score:3)
Whoever wins, we lose.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only. Because no matter how this ends up, eventually it's gonna make everyone unhappy. Google and other bigwigs will not foot the bill but instead use their market share and leverage to muscle a better deal for themselves, making it harder for any emerging competition to get a foothold, especially since this competition will have to pick up the slack here. Artists won't see more money for the very same reason but with more work and poor PR, and everyone else will just suffer through weeks and months of
Re: (Score:1)
"Artists won't see more money" - if they own their own publishing they most certainly will see more money. That's how publishing works.
Re: (Score:3)
Streaming already pays higher rates than radio to the labels. If artists are receiving lower rates form the labels, I think I see where the problem is.
(As always, the trick is to wrap your labor with a corporation.)
The real issue (Score:1)
Is that too much money goes to those who dont create... distribution, share holders, marketing and shit like that.
If they'd be realistic with it, they could easily pay the artist way more and still get a price drop on the services.... but those ritch motherfucker want to get ever more ritcher so... all the rest pay in a way or another.
Re: (Score:2)
And the actual artists will get... ? (Score:2)
Once all the middlemen (dustributor, rights holder, records majors, whatever...) are factored in and these extra 44% get distributed, the original song's artists themselves will get an extra 4 ct.
Per month.
In total.
Re: (Score:2)
History ? (Score:2)
Probably because back when the law was passed, "making music" was considered to be the act of writing the sheets, and the act of playing was merely considered as a performance of the music (think band playing in a corner of the pub/saloon/whatever. Or the musician(s) playing while a silent film is running - mostly equivalent to a movie playing an audio track).
The considered "performing" mostly the same way as an automatic piano playing a roll, or the way we nowadays consider an MP3 player reproducing a soun
Re: (Score:2)
*raises hand* Well...yes.
Re: (Score:2)
Well of course, teachers with a 5 figure salary are going to quit and get a job in sanitation with higher pay and more respect.
Apple plays it safe (Score:4, Insightful)
If Amazon, Spotify etc will succeed, it'll wont have to increase the payouts either. -> Win and they can tell the artist Apple was on their side. Perhaps even increase the payout by a few small percent to become to more attractive to artists again.
If the lawsuit fails, Amazon, Spotify etc will be the bad bullies with egg on their faces. -> Win for Apple again. No legal cost and they have positioned themselves at the side of the artists.
Whatever happens, Apple doesn't lose by letting others take the fall or doing the work.
Clever.
Re:Apple plays it safe (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, yes. Apple, the Romulans of Silicon Valley.
Re: (Score:1)
Apple got burned [nytimes.com] when they launched Apple Music by not paying royalties to artists during free trials. They quickly changed their policy, but got quite a lot of flack for it.
I think this is less of them being clever than them just not wanting to touch this with a ten foot pole.
Should be what it was worth when first published (Score:2)
If I work for an employer, I get what they have agreed to pay me. Therefore if I write a song, my income from it should be what was the going rate at the time I wrote it - adjusted for inflation of course. This of course should apply to copyright periods: what they were when the product was published.
Re: (Score:2)
But the song writers are not employees of Apple, Google, Amazon, Spotify, etc. The songs were also not written on contract to the streaming services. The song writers OWN the songs for the most part. There is partial ownership by music publishers but still zero ownership by the streaming services.