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Streaming music platforms like Spotify are extremely popular, but they also pay next to nothing to creators and even the labels are not getting nearly as much as they wanted.

As best as I can tell, it's the other way around. The base royalty rate for purchased music is 9.1 cents per song. Spotify pays 0.6 to 0.84 cents per play. In other words, if a Spotify user hears a song more than 11-15 times (irrespective of time period), the creators have gotten more royalties from Spotify than if the listener had purchased the song directly.

cpu6502 blathered:

Public performance of copyrighted works, even legal recordings, is forbidden in the U.S. and the RIAA expects other countries to have similar laws.

Absolutely, totally, completely, and utterly incorrect.

Covering another songwriter's material is perfectly legal, whether you record it or perform it live - as long as the orginal recording has been in release for at least one calendar year. HOWEVER, if you cover a song, you MUST pay what's known as a "mechanical license fee" of 9.10 cents per copy for songs 5 minutes or less or 1.75 cents per minute or fraction thereof, per copy for songs over 5 minutes to the author or authors of the material (fee schedule courtesy Harry Fox Agency). That royalty rate is set by Congress, per international treaties.

I understand that talking out your ass is a favorite /. exercise, but ... really?

Actually, I don't think it matters whether Weird Al is doing parody or not, because he isn't using the original copyrighted works. He records his own music with his own band, and makes his own videos as well. Anyone can do that. It's basically the same as recording a cover song. All you need to do that is pay a flat fee to a mechanical rights organization such as The Harry Fox Agency in the US. Since his songs have significant original content, it's likely he doesn't even need to do that, since it could probably be called a derivative work (but I'm only guessing there).

Al gets permission from the original artists only as a professional courtesy. He is under no obligation to do so, whether his songs are parody or not.

Wouldn't it count as a cover version? If so, then if this was being sold on CD then he would need to buy a mechanical licence (about 10 cents a copy I believe). Not sure how that applies to a non-commercial digital distribution though.

I worked in the very fscked up industry?

Nope, the label owns only the musicians contract and terms and the recording itself (NOT the music) - they license the lyrics from a publisher. See ASCAP below.

You own the CD and can listen to it in private. If you broadcast or perform it publicly it in ANY way, you owe the lyricist money as per the licensing rules. This battle has been fought and lost multiple times in court (e.g. webcasting). Note that only the lyric writer is owed money - the musicians don't get a dime (that includes me for my recordings, thus my bitterness). Read up on the Harry Fox agency:
http://www.harryfox.com/index.jsp

The musicians contract with the record company for their services on the recording - that is independent of the lyrics. See the links below.

see Record Label here:
http://www.ascap.com/licensing/termsdefined.html

the MPA covers sheet music and compositions (NOT live performances)
http://mpa.org/copyright_resource_center/copying

Artists with songs that are deemed too similar can attempt to sue the infringing artist, but this is difficult to prove. There are some high profile wins, like Huey Lewis vs Ghostbusters and Vanilla Ice vs David Bowie/Queen (settled out of court), but it's very difficult to copyright a riff because of the limited "vocabulary" in music - How many variations of 12 notes and 4 beats per bar are there (the most common structure)? Even combined into chords you get a lot of repeats due to the structure of western music (based on thirds). Think of a note like a letter and the song as words (and rhythm the cadence of the speaker) - at some point you can claim yours is original enough to be (say) poetry, but a short phrase (riff) that would be analogous to 2-3 words is VERY hard to prove. Only very memorable lines even stand a chance of winning (e.g. the 7 bar bass line to Pink Floyd's Money might qualify, for instance, or the multi-line guitar riff from Metallica's One, but Bob Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door? Never gonna happen).

Some of what you propose already exists. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license. You might want to also look into how this is done for mechanical reproduction rights through the Harry Fox Agency web site. Then what you can do is read up on how things are done now, and propose any expansion of this you believe should be done. One area I personally believe should be changed is expanding mechanical reproduction rights so that a 500 copy minimum is not longer required.

Die dinosaur die. An idea whose time is at hand?

Mechanical Royalties are collected by the monopoly Harry Fox Agency
( http://www.harryfox.com/public/licenseHome.jsp ) in America
and the writers/composers copyright royalties are collected by the
duopoly ASCAP.COM and BMI.COM .

Mechanical copyright and Performance copyright royalties are collected
by the MCPS-PRS Alliance monopoly in Britain
( http://www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk/Pages/default.aspx ).

All are complicit with the MAFFIA/RIAA shenanigans one-way-or-another
as usual, and generally the royalties are horribly skewed in favor of
already well-to-do, 'established' acts - actively discriminating against new
and 'smaller' players.

The time is ripe for original unsigned composers and musicians to bust the
above cartels by starting their own new organisation for supplying: radio, film,
television, record and cyber 'popular' markets - with a standardised membership
agreement and competitive contracts for the various clients.

Slashdotters might even be able to organise it all ... presuming it is actually possible to 'herd' any or all of those disparate cats.

RR

This isn't an RIAA issue. They sell recorded performances. It's the copyright in the composition that's involved here. That's licensed separately, in the US usually through the Harry Fox Agency.

My understanding of compulsory licensing is that any broadcaster, or any other entity wanting to obtain a license, for various purposes, can choose to either go to the copyright holder directly or their agent, -or-, go to the compulsory licensing entity (SoundExchange in the case of broadcasting ... there are others for other purposes, such as The Harry Fox Agency for mechanical reproduction licensing).

How this impacts the broadcaster is that they have a choice. They can go to SoundExchange and get a license at the designated rate (the rate that is skyrocketing upwards). Or they can go directly to the copyright owner and make whatever deal they want if the copyright owner is willing, at any agreeable rate. This ensures the broadcaster that there is at least one way to get licensing, even if it is expensive. But if the copyright owner is willing, they could get a cheaper rate directly, or different terms.

How this impacts the copyright owner is that their music can be licensed out through SoundExchange, even if they didn't want to go through SoundExchange. They can then go to SoundExchange and get their share of the booty. The copyright owner can also make a deal separately with any broadcaster to license under different rates and terms. Obviously the broadcaster would choose to go to SoundExchange unless the direct deal is better (including figuring the costs of working out the deal).

If my understanding of this is correct, independent bands can make their music available to broadcasters directly. Because there would be so much work involved in setting up such deals because of so many broadcasters and so many bands, it won't be practical to do on any scale unless the bands either make a blanket no-fee license for all, or go through a common agent of their own choosing that can make package deals (e.g. broadcasters can get a package of bands licensed to play, and bands can get a package of broadcasters paying for their licensing).

The designated compulsory agent doesn't have to be a part of the deal at all. They are there, however, in case the broadcaster isn't able to make a deal because the copyright owner wouldn't work with them. It's basically a mechanism available for broadcasters to be able to get a license for sure (under terms that are now becoming basically favorable only to the big corporate broadcasters). So small multi-channel internet broadcasters have a choice between a lousy compulsory license they can't afford, or doing direct deals that will be too expensive to manage unless and alternate agency is set up.

If an alternate agency is set up, such as for independent bands, that agency does NOT have any compulsory authority. That means they cannot make a license available on a compulsory basis; they are limited to only licensing music of copyright owners they actually represent.

So, IMHO, internet broadcasters can still play music at rates less than what SoundExchange demands. They just have to cut their own deals with every copyright owner or their agents (there could easily come to be more than one, possibly quite many) instead of choosing the compulsory route.

Mod parent up. The original article reflects a complete misunderstanding of the compulsory license system. It's compulsory against owners of rights in sound recordings. They have to grant a license whether they want to or not. However, there's nothing prohibiting owners of sound recordings and a distribution service of whatever type from making a deal outside the compulsory license system.

For example, someone could set up a Free Music Foundation to offer free licenses to Internet radio stations, unknown bands could grant distribution rights for their stuff to the Free Music Foundation, and Internet "radio stations" (really streaming download sites) could play exclusively Free Music Foundation material, without any compulsory license or statutory royalties.

Or, at the other extreme, you could have Payola Internet Radio, where bands pay to put their stuff on the stream. Again, no statutory royalties.

This isn't a big issue in the industry. The big issue with compulsory licenses right now is whether they apply to ringtones. The Copyright Board said they do last year, which makes ringtones much cheaper. The Harry Fox Agency is dragging their feet on this, but it's now established that if you download an entire song and use it as a ringtone, that's covered under the compulsory license. Arguments continue about using only part of the song.

This is part of an ongoing dispute between the Harry Fox Agency, the RIAA, and the ringtone industry over compulsory licenses.

The recording industry in the US has a statutory deal in the Copyright Act which allows them to re-record previously published songs (i.e. issue "cover albums") by paying a fixed royalty determined by Congress and the Librarian of Congress. This is called a "compulsory license". Most music publishers are represented by the Harry Fox Agency, which actually issues the "compulsory license" on request and collects and redistributes the royalties.

Then came ringtones. The Harry Fox Agency, in 2004, took the position that the compulsory license required by law does not cover ringtones. This was a bogus position, and on October 16, 2006, the Registrar of Copyrights ruled that ringtones are subject to the compulsory license. The Harry Fox Agency is taking this badly; "This decision has no effect on HFA's existing policy that DPD licenses ... do not cover ... ringtones or mastertones. The RIAA is sueing them, and HFA is probably going to lose this one.

This is really a very obscure issue even in the music industry. In the end, ringtones might get cheaper, and we may see the end of that silly distinction in the cellphone world between downloaded tracks and ringtones.

This is part of an ongoing dispute between the Harry Fox Agency, the RIAA, and the ringtone industry over compulsory licenses.

The recording industry in the US has a statutory deal in the Copyright Act which allows them to re-record previously published songs (i.e. issue "cover albums") by paying a fixed royalty determined by Congress and the Librarian of Congress. This is called a "compulsory license". Most music publishers are represented by the Harry Fox Agency, which actually issues the "compulsory license" on request and collects and redistributes the royalties.

Then came ringtones. The Harry Fox Agency, in 2004, took the position that the compulsory license required by law does not cover ringtones. This was a bogus position, and on October 16, 2006, the Registrar of Copyrights ruled that ringtones are subject to the compulsory license. The Harry Fox Agency is taking this badly; "This decision has no effect on HFA's existing policy that DPD licenses ... do not cover ... ringtones or mastertones. The RIAA is sueing them, and HFA is probably going to lose this one.

This is really a very obscure issue even in the music industry. In the end, ringtones might get cheaper, and we may see the end of that silly distinction in the cellphone world between downloaded tracks and ringtones.

This is part of an ongoing dispute between the Harry Fox Agency, the RIAA, and the ringtone industry over compulsory licenses.

The recording industry in the US has a statutory deal in the Copyright Act which allows them to re-record previously published songs (i.e. issue "cover albums") by paying a fixed royalty determined by Congress and the Librarian of Congress. This is called a "compulsory license". Most music publishers are represented by the Harry Fox Agency, which actually issues the "compulsory license" on request and collects and redistributes the royalties.

Then came ringtones. The Harry Fox Agency, in 2004, took the position that the compulsory license required by law does not cover ringtones. This was a bogus position, and on October 16, 2006, the Registrar of Copyrights ruled that ringtones are subject to the compulsory license. The Harry Fox Agency is taking this badly; "This decision has no effect on HFA's existing policy that DPD licenses ... do not cover ... ringtones or mastertones. The RIAA is sueing them, and HFA is probably going to lose this one.

This is really a very obscure issue even in the music industry. In the end, ringtones might get cheaper, and we may see the end of that silly distinction in the cellphone world between downloaded tracks and ringtones.

Cleansing music files is not much harder

Are you sure? If the stego and the crypto behind it are good enough, you won't know that you even need to cleanse a given file, let alone which algorithmic steps to take to cleanse it.

and one can always simply re-record the music too

Recording a new performance of the music is called a cover version. RIAA isn't interested in covers, but Harry Fox Agency is.

qz

Why isn't there a wikilyrics site?

There was (though it wasn't a Wiki). It was called lyrics.ch (which has since been domain-squatted by one songtext.net). It was compiled by avid music enthusiasts, and it contained the most complete and most accurate repository of song lyrics available...

Until it was destroyed by the Harry Fox Agency. The Harry Fox Agency is the sole licensor of song lyrics worldwide, and saw lyrics.ch as unlicensed competition. So they had it exterminated. (lyrics.ch's mistake, if it could be called one, was that they accepted paid banner advertising to defray hosting costs. Sadly, this got creatively misinterpreted by the courts as unlawfully profiting off lyric distribution, violating Harry Fox Agency's monopoly rights.)

So, yes, there was one, but it got destroyed. Don't expect a WikiLyrics site to show up in its place; it will get destroyed the same way.

Schwab

He can't copy it without your permission.

Oh yes he can. The USA has a "virtual" complusory licensing rule for "covering" songs. Due to the oligopoly on music publishing, there is one company controlling rights to basically any song.

Essentially, he doesn't need your permission, but he does need to pay you. (And no, you can't set the price)

It's not just the record labels that are against DRM free downloads, the various publishing companies and the organisations that represent them (such as the harry fox agency) won't give you a license to sell music unless they're DRMed. To make things worse, they require a payment per download and not per sale, which means you can't serve a second copy of a file to a client who has already bought it without paying for it. Even if the music hasn't been released by a label, if it has been published, the publisher needs to be payed.

The only way around this is to negotiate deals directly with publishers (bypassing the agencies - a lot of work as there are thousands of publishers, which is the reason why the agencies exist), or to release material by artists who don't have publishing deals.

It's not illegal to sing "Happy Birthday," it's illegal to sing it publicly and not pay the requisite fee to ASCAP or whichever organization handles the collecting of fees and distribution of royalties to composers.

That would probably be the Harry Fox Agency. And, by the way, I would imagine a clown being hired professionally to sing "Happy Birthday" would come under this category (as distinct from the bunch of six year old friends singing around the lunch table).

We're also stuck with the not-in-the-US-then-you-can't-get-this-cool-thing problem here in .au. Its especially annoying with services like iTunes, which for me, is something that I'd use regularly. I'm about to invest in an iPaq with the goal of buying a lot of eBooks (actual softcover paper books cost like AU$25 now - the new Tom Clancy was _$50_ in hardcover when it was released, are you kidding?!). I forgot to check to see if I can buy eBooks online, so hopefully I can.

If not, I'm giving up on waiting for the world to get their ass into gear about it, and I'll do whatever I can to get these eBooks (and iTunes/Napster/whatever is best at the time tracks). Fortunately I have relatives in the US, so if worse comes to worse, I can get them to run a proxy there and use their billing details to do it all. Still, I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO. The whole point of this stupid Internet thing is that its global.

Incidentally, there are a few online music retailers in Australia. Destra Music and BigPond Music. Both of these only supply heavily DRM'ed WMA versions (which I've heard are at a fairly low bit rate), so most people with a clue aren't interested (not to mention their range of music is extremely limited).

I've spent a good chunk of time in the last couple of months trying to figure out what is involved in setting up a legal online music distribution thing - either for streaming/Internet radio or to sell music - our company is one of the largest content distributors (via our mirrors sites) in Australia so I think it'd be something we'd be good at.

However, it is practically impossible to find out what you need. While APRA, the company responsible for licensing the musical work, have been quite helpful, that is only half of what licensing you need - you also need to license the mechanical work (the recording). At this point in time, no one in Australia represents record companies to do this (eg, there's noone like the Harry Fox Agency in Australia). There's the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia, but they don't issue licenses for online applications (apparently, they will be "in the next few months"...).

So, as far as I'm aware, your only option is to try and contact the record companies (each one) individually (this is what APRA told me almost straight off the bat, but I didn't believe them, so kept researching). Of the several I've tried to contact, I've had no reply (not just email - even leaving phone messages with the appropriate licensing department and not getting called back). I've contacted the Harry Fox Agency - apparently they do international licensing - but haven't heard back from them either.

To me, its no wonder the state of the industry is in such a state of shenanigans. You probably have to drive a dump truck full of money up to these guys to actually get their attention. The pathetic options available everywhere outside the US are obviously not enough to stop people pirating music - why would you bother when you're going to get a superior product (if you don't mind a bit more searching, of course) for free?

Eight Mile Style filed the copyright infringement suit ... At issue is an ad for Apple's iTunes pay-per-download music software, in which a 10-year-old sings Eminem's "Lose Yourself."

I agree. If a 10-year-old is singing the song, then it is a new performance (unless Eminem has a time machine.) To use Eminem's song for a new performance requires "mechanical rights", which are automatically granted for a set fee. Mechanical rights are applied for selling something that includes the copyright (but not perfomances) of an artist. I believe that should apply to advertising that does not include the artist's performance, but IANAL.

Most songs are handled by the The Harry Fox Agency (HFA). Eminem has 50 songs listed at Songfile.com, which is HFA's online license application for low volume use. The list does not include "Lose Yourself". If the song is not handled by HFA, then you must contact the publisher directly.

There is a lawsuit, so somebody believes they had the right to tell Apple they could not use lyrics in a commercial. But it is not about a "sample", because Apple did not use a "sample" of Eminem's performance.

Weird Al does attempt to contact the artists he is parodying, but parody is acceptable under copyright law.

Coolio included a sample as well as a rewrite, so he must have gotten permission.

Reference website.
Cover songs are covered under a mechanical license. The artist cannot stop you from covering their song.

Samples require the permission of the publisher and the owner of the master. They set the terms, so they can easily charge enough to make it infeasible.

From the copyright office:
There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances.

I know that chord progressions cannot be copyrighted, or all combinations of I-IV-V would have been eliminated long ago. But I would not use Star Wars' Imperial March without disguising it. The similarity argument rests on
amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The only case I remember was Bon Jovi suing and winning for one line of "Living on a Prayer", but I cannot find a reference. They won because the line was the same words and melody in the chorus. (I think it was "We're halfway there".)

If "On Top of Old Smokey" was not public domain, we would not have "Chariots of Fire". Restaurants write their own (awful) birthday songs to avoid paying for "Happy Birthday" written in 1893.

I wonder that melody is considered so important, since every singer applies very different melodies to my songs. I usually write 2 melodies for each song for my own singing so I can change depending if my voice has warmed up. Live versions usually have different melodies than the studio versions. I saw Britney Spears do "Baby One More Time" in a medley on TV once, and the melody was very different than the radio version. (I think it was because the TV version was live and only had one note.)

Today it is up to the artist to notice that someone released a very similar song. "Melancholy Elephants" refers to a world where the copyrights are checked against existing music before being issued. Given the patent office's reluctance to do anything resembling work, we should not have to worry about automatic copyright validation, but it would be much easier to validate music with computers than patents.

AzOz.com sure does look like a reliable source of information, with headlines like "Downloading is NOT Illegal -- How to Avoid the Foreign Terrorists".

People like you are brainwashed by all of this anti-"M$", anti-RIAA, anti-everything rhetoric that is being published (and I use the word published very, very loosely) all over the Internet.

But now, I am going to do you a favor, and present ACTUAL FACTS to you. Make sure you read them, and understand them.

The copyright held on any particular recording is completely separate from the copyright held for the actual song that the recording was made from.

If you knew how record contracts work, the "work for hire" in the record contracts refer to the actual recordings, not to the underlying songs.

An example for you: Powerslave, by Iron Maiden. The record is copyrighted by EMI Records, Ltd. The songs themselves are copyrighted by Iron Maiden (Holdings), Ltd. They are two separate entities with two separate copyrights.

Here is where you are going to insist that I am wrong (without any kind of evidence) and that you are correct. But, I'm going to cut you off right there, and insist that you prove that I am wrong. Answer these questions for me:

1) Since the rights to the songs belong to a record label, why doesn't the band have to pay the label a royalty every time they perform the song? If you know anything about the law, you have to pay a royalty every time you perform a copyrighted work. (A good reference for this is

2) Since the rights to the songs belong to the record label, why doesn't the band have to pay royalties to the record label if they switch labels and then perform a song later in their career, and record that song for a live album?

You won't be able to answer those, because you're wrong. The song-writers retain the copyright to their songs, UNLESS they have a clause in their contracts that says otherwise.

But this doesn't happen. From a practical standpoint, it would destroy your music career if you signed the rights to your songs away -- what if the record label dumped you? ANY LAWYER would tell you not sign a contract with a clause like that.

DiscMakers writes about this kind of crap all the time in their newsletters.

Harry Fox Agency represents over 27,000 music publishers for licensing and monitoring services -- are there 27,000 RIAA record labels?

So, I did some reading -- AzOz is full of propaganda.

I, however, have been at this music thing for quite a while, I've done my homework for years, and I know what the facts are.

Is Barry Fox, the author of this article, a black sheep from the same family as Harry Fox?

Aside from the (questionable) joy of explaining cryptography to suits and explaining licensing requirements to geeks (Harry Fox helps throw a real monkey wrench in there, administering rights for song-writers), one of the things that came up time and time again was anti-trust issues.

SMEI and WMG were well-aware that together they represented about 30% of the market (they split that up, flip-flopping every year over who has the most based on who had bigger hits). Their expectation was that a joint venture between them would attract BMG, Universal, EMI and whoever was number six at the time. Then independents would simply have to fish or cut bait and join up as well.

Everyone was very careful to avoid using words and phrases like "controlling", "domination", etc. at least in written materials. People would verbally joke that they needed to make sure those words weren't written down, in case they ever got subpoena'ed for anti-trust, but everyone knew that the objective was making the HBO of electronic music distribution. You see, they recognized that HBO had the movie companies by the short and curlies as far as cable distribution of films went, and didn't want the same to happen to them in a new media distribution - the film companies have been worrying about this for themselves for electronic distribution for a couple of years now.

Of course, Napster beat them to it, so they beat on Napster legally. One of the funniest things about the timing of these things for me was SDMI being announced just after MP3 hit the cover of Time Magazine, when I'd been working on it for years prior. And of course they got the DMCA passed in the meantime, making cracking even the stupidest of copy control schemes illegal. Of course, every crypto expert they talked to at the time (myself included) emphasized that no scheme was foolproof and you should be sure to design the system to minimize damage in the case of a crack. Being powerful executives with lobbyists on retainer, a legal solution was obvious.

So, all in all, I'm pleasantly amused that the music companies got just a bit too eager and slipped in one phrase too many.....

Then you were never looking at the International Lyrics Server. You were looking at the thing that killed the International Lyrics Server.

Did anybody ever mirror the original ILS before the enemy destroyed it? Does anybody have backup tapes/CD-Rs?

Since the shutdown (and make no mistake, songfile.com was never useful as anything other than a way to find out that yes, Harry Fox owned the words, and wanted you to know they owned the words, and didn't want you to read them - or that they didn't own the words and therefore you couldn't read them) seems that bandwidth has gotten accessible enough that such a thing, if it exists, could be discreetly distributed via one of the many P2P applications, or posted to USENET via an open SOCKS proxy. Diskspace has also gotten cheap enough that individuals could host their own local copies of the pre-Foxsized ILS on their own hard drives.

Not that I'd encourage anyone to do such a thing. But it'd be kinda nice to see if someone were to independently come up with the idea of doing it.

If your as pissed as I am,
write the company responsible:
Harry Fox Agency at
http://www.nmpa.org/hfa.html

HFA
711 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Tel: (212) 370-5330
Fax: (212) 953-2384

Questions about HFA or a
license request?
Contact the Client Services
Department at
clientservice@harryfox.com