Those of us who toil in the vineyard of online music subscription services are quite, quite familiar with the difficulties of obtaining licenses for songs for on-demand streaming. (Remember, there are two copyrights in a sound recording--the song and the recording of the song--and record companies only control the sound recording.) The task of obtaining rights to even the big songs much less the more obscure long-tail material is an effort worthy of legend. I'm never sure if I prefer the analogy to Dante's fourth circle of hell, or Hercules' fifth labor.
The Songwriters Guild of America led by A+L advisory board member Rick Carnes, the Nashville Songwriters Association International, led by Bart Herbison, and the National Music Publishers Association led by David Israelite and his fine team finally reached an agreement with the major online music services and the RIAA that finally established rates for on-demand streaming and limited downloads.
You can read the details in the press release, but the fact that it happened at all is a MAJOR step forward.
The agreement is now submitted as proposed regulations to the Copyright Review Board which will take into account the proposed regulations in determining the final rates and regulations for subscription services.
This caps what is essentially a decade-long struggle to get licenses for the technology companies who want to do it right in the legitimate online music space. I know that David Israelite in particular spent a lot of time in recent years trying different legislative strategies to bring this package home, and it looks like he may have finally done it.
Too often these achievements are so inside football that the participants feel like they just made the immaculate reception in a silent stadium, instead of getting Franco Harris-level cheers. Hopefully there will be no doubt about who scored a touchdown when the CRB issues their ruling. But in the meantime, I'll stand up and give a cheer and hopefully others will, too.
This is a fine example of technology companies working with the creative community toward a common goal--creating a legitimate market for music online that can generate income for creators, in this case the songwriters whose ranks have been decimated by net pollution.
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