Headlines

February 04, 2008

Mechanical royalty fight: labels and webcasters vs. songwriters and publishers...

Wired Listening Post | Read Full Story >

While songwriters want an increase from 9.1 cents to 12.5 cents per song sold—saying distribution costs are dropping during the transition to digital—the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, wants songwriting royalties to be set at 8 percent of the wholesale price. DiMA proposes 4.1 percent of the retail price, and has asked the Copyright Royalty Board to decide whether webcasters need to pay mechanical royalties at all, since streaming isn’t designed to leave the consumer with a copy of the song.

But once everybody’s devices are connected, downloading music could be considered a waste of disk space. Songwriters and publishers could be out of luck should this stream-centric future come to pass: Under DiMA’s proposal, they would be paid for interactive streams and on-demand playback services at royalty rates designed for radio, rather than for music sales, despite the fact that on-demand streaming could basically replace sales. The result: significantly lower royalty checks.



Click Here