8Sided Blog

thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

That Music Rights Shell Game

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Routenote:

With the release of iOS 10, song lyrics are now displayed within Apple Music. Apple have received incredibly positive feedback from members, who can now follow along during playback of their favourite songs. To ensure songwriters are paid Apple is obtaining the licenses required to display lyrics in Apple Music. Apple rely on accurate songwriter and composer data to efficiently obtain these licenses.



O RLY?

Music•Technology•Policy:

Apple says to “make sure the ownership of your song is registered with a publisher, and that they have registered ownership with relevant publishing agencies such as ASCAP, BMI, PRS, Harry Fox and Music Reports.” That obviously is misleading.



First of all, we can’t be that surprised that Apple has this impression because as we all know, it is frequently lost on HFA and MRI that neither of them is in fact the government. However, given that Amazon, Google, Pandora and others are sending millions upon millions of NOIs to the Copyright Office claiming to have no idea who owns songs by very well known artists, it should make it obvious that the one place you need to “register” your song copyright ownership is with the U.S. Copyright Office.



It’s also misleading to state that you have to have “the ownership of your songs…register[ed] with a publisher” which may happen frequently, but is not required to enjoy ownership rights.



That unified music metadata database (Blockchain, etc) that keeps getting bandied about can’t come soon enough.

Royalty, Royalty Everywhere

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Ari’s Take:

Before the digital age, royalties were difficult to track, but there were fewer platforms to consume music, so there were far fewer royalty streams to worry about.



With physical sales plummeting, and people shifting from downloading to streaming (like Spotify and Apple Music) and the rise of digital radio (like Pandora and Sirius/XM), there are many more royalties out there, but they can be tracked much easier through sonic recognition and content ID software.



We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting closer every day.



For indie artists without a label or a publisher, you have to know what these royalties are and know where and how to get them.



Ari Herstand has done a noble service with this informative list of revenue streams for the new-to-it-all artist and songwriter (and it’s a good refresher to those who have been around the block, too). I love pieces like this as they are useful to bookmark and pass on when I encounter an friend or client who wants to learn more about how the sausage is made.

If you’d like to continue your studies, here’s an article titled Now You Know Everything About Music Publishing, as well as a second, completely different article also titled Now You Know Everything About Music Publishing, both hosted by Digital Music News. Now that’s unnecessarily confusing, but appropriately a metaphor for music rights management itself.

Future Of Music Coalition On Political Campaigns and Music Licensing

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Here’s some more on this subject, as it seems to be quite the hot topic in my social media circles. The Future Of Music Coalition has released a factsheet on music licensing and political campaigns that explains a songwriter’s rights much clearer than I was able to in my previous post. One thing I was unsure about was whether a politician’s campaign could have a compulsory license that travels with them … the factsheet clarifies:

Anytime a campaign plays a song at a rally, they must ensure that they have a public performance license covering the composition’s use. Most major public venues such as convention centers and arenas typically purchase blanket licenses from performance rights organizations or PROS (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) allowing campaigns to “publicly perform” any song in their repertoire, which includes the vast majority of compositions. However, these licenses may not cover all uses, so most national campaigns also purchase their own blanket licenses covering all campaign events; an additional benefit is that if they have a whistlestop event on the campaign trail at a factory or in a park and they throw a playlist on the P.A., they’d still be covered.


An ASCAP document specifically concerning music use in political events is linked, which is quite useful. That document also details other avenues that a songwriter could pursue to seek retribution, including a claim of ‘false endorsement.’ I’d like to know if that has been successfully used in a lawsuit against a political campaign under circumstances similar to the recent R.E.M. and Survivor cases. I bet it hasn’t. A judge would have a certain regard for the intelligence of the public … it would be seen as pretty obvious, from a legal standpoint, that playing an R.E.M. song as walk-on music doesn’t equate endorsement of a candidate.