Posts Tagged: "National Music Publishers Association"

On September 27, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and online game platform provider Roblox announced that the two parties had settled ongoing copyright litigation in the Central District of California over Roblox’s unauthorized use of copyrighted music on its online gaming platform. The settlement also creates an opt-in mechanism for eligible NMPA publishers and opens a negotiation period for individual publishers to engage Roblox in go-forward licensing deals.

On October 11, the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act (MMA) was enacted into law after passing both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The bill was drafted in order to modernize U.S. copyright law as it relates to the licensing of copyright protected music for use in digital streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music. Such digital service providers (DSPs) may obtain a new kind of license created by the law, known as a blanket license, which covers the distribution of all musical works available for compulsory licensing. DSPs may then make these works available to consumers through covered activities, such as delivering digital phonorecords of musical works available in the form of a permanent download, a limited download or as an interactive stream.In short, the blanket license under the MMA allows Spotify and others to offer streaming music services without having to negotiate licenses with copyright-owning entities, including recording studios and songwriters. Instead, these streaming services would obtain a blanket license from the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), another new feature of the MMA. The MLC is a non-profit entity responsible for administering blanket licenses to DSPs, collecting and distributing royalties, enabling copyright owners to claim ownership of musical works and administering a process by which royalties for works with unidentified owners are equitably distributed to known copyright owners. The statutory language of the MMA directs the Register of Copyrights to designate the membership of the MLC within 270 days of enactment of the law. Given the date on which the MMA was enacted, this would indicate that July 8 of this year is the deadline for Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple to designate the MLC that would start administering blanket licenses at the beginning of 2021. There are two groups that have proposed their own membership of the MLC to the Copyright Office: a coalition of major publishers from the music industry, including the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), Songwriters of North America (SONA) and Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI); and the American Music Licensing Collective (AMLC), a collection of songwriters, musicians, tech developers and executives from smaller rights organizations and publishers within the music industry.

When Congress permitted sound recordings to be copyrighted over four decades ago, it didn’t extend that coverage to pre-1972 recordings. This issue, and the piecemeal nature of licensing for digital music on a per-work, per song basis, were part of the impetus for the stakeholders in the music industry to work together to create the Music Modernization Act, signed into law on October 11, 2018… Not all issues in the music industry were solved by the Music Modernization Act: licensing of physical sound recordings (vinyl and CDs) will still occur on a per-work, per song basis. Terrestrial radio pays songwriters and publishers royalties for playing music, but it doesn’t pay performance or sound-recording royalties. And while the goal of one public database is laudable, the responsibility still lies with songwriters and publishers to submit copyright applications and to submit all of their musical works and sound recordings to the MLC… While there is still work to be done, the Music Modernization Act does solve some long-standing issues in the music industry.

A collection of trade organizations representing music publishers and songwriters recently released a joint statement in which all announced unconditional support for S.2823, the Music Modernization Act (MMA). These organizations include SESAC, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and the Songwriters of North America (SONA). The support of the bill from these collective entities comes after an amendment to the act designed to improve private competition in the market for music licensing after a contentious period of negotiating that amendment.

As advocates for all music creators, including independent songwriters, we have endorsed the Music Modernization Act, along with other organizations spanning the music industry, as part of a package of important reforms that will better the lives of people who make music for a living and strengthen the music economy overall.

Less than 48 hours before the 60th Annual Grammy Awards in New York City, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) ruled to increase royalty payments to songwriters and music publishers from music streaming companies by nearly 44 percent, the biggest rate increase granted in CRB history. These rates will go into effect for interactive streaming and limited download services like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Spotify for the years 2018-2022, and will transform how songwriters are paid by these interactive streaming services.

The lawsuit is the latest example of content creators chasing down a third party that does not directly infringe content but rather facilitates infringement through a combination of its own hardware and third-party software… Currently, the increasingly proposed solution for safeguarding digital information is blockchain technology. Blockchain is being implemented in various industries to solve inefficiencies in areas from identity protection to supply chain management… To understand blockchain technology as a potential solution to the problems posed in the digital rights management space, one must first understand what the technology is and how it operates.

The $43.5 million from the recent Spotify settlement will reportedly go towards a separate fund to compensate publishers and songwriters. Such payments made by Spotify and other streaming services to copyright owners are known as mechanical royalties. Mechanical royalties are usually paid when a copy of a song is made, such as when a music publisher creates a CD containing copyright-protected songs. Although Spotify doesn’t sell or distribute physical media, it does owe mechanical royalties when it streams a copy of a song to a user.