Support Grows For Blanket Music Licensing

Anti-Globalism sends in Ars coverage of a speech by Jim Griffin, who is a consultant for Warner, one of the big four music labels. Griffin is encouraging dialog on the idea of blanket licensing of music — a topic heretofore more likely to be heard from the EFF or the Barenaked Ladies. "Taking music without paying for it may not be 'morally voluntary,' Griffin says, but he admits it has become 'functionally voluntary.' No civilized society, he adds, can endure 'purely voluntary payment for art, knowledge, and culture.' So Griffin's job is to help Warner monetize digital music, and he's convinced that the issue of payment for music is nothing less than 'our generation's nuclear power.' Griffin's most intriguing idea, and one he's been pitching for some time now, is a voluntary, blanket music license; essentially, bringing the collection society model to end users. In this model, consumers would pay royalties into a pot (by paying an extra monthly fee to their ISPs, for instance) and would then have access to all the music from all the labels that participate in the scheme."

Comments

Re:Error: Persepctive Missing.

[Samantha Wright]

I think this may be more about the size of the debate. More like "this generation's struggle with the environmental concerns pertaining to nuclear power."

Blanket licenses works great - a good model

[davide marney]

I have some direct experience with blanket music licenses, and they work well.

Churches are big users of music, both traditional and modern. They have to deal with issues of duplication and performance rights for 6-10 songs, every week. The level of effort needed to clear copyrights song-by-song would be impossible.

Ten years ago, the Church Copyright License was created, representing the catalogs of 120 publishers. After one year, they had 9,500 annual licensee holders. They now have over 170,000.

The churches pay a very reasonable annual fee, and get blanket permission to reproduce and perform any songs in the combined catalogs. There are sensible limits on what can be done legally, all basically to the effect of limiting the use to a normal church service.

A random sample of licensees are sent an audit form each year, and they record all the music they've used during the past few months. CCLI also provides software to do the accounting work, so the audit can be completely automated if the church wants.

Payouts to the copyright holders are done in proportion to the usage audits. The payout ratio is very fair. I know several song writers and performers who receive royalty checks, so I know the system really does work.

I've written some hymns myself (New Hymns for Worship), and have looked over the CCLI contracts in detail. They look pretty clean (but IANAL). Although I ultimately decided to publish under a Create Commons license instead, if I had wanted to make money, I would have definitely signed up with CCLI myself.

So, blanket licenses can work. They don't need to be expensive. They let consumers roam freely through whole catalogs of music. It's a good model.

Re:Error: Persepctive Missing.

[Nadaka]

How are people living close to a reactor site being screwed? Did you know that more radioactivity is released into the environment by the average coal burning plant than the entire nuclear industry in the US? Did you know that more people die from industrial accidents in coal power plants in one year in the US than have ever died in Nuclear powerplants (of any cause, including natural) combined with deaths caused by nuclear accidents?

Nuclear power is many tens of times safer than the default energy production method in this country. And using Feeder-Breeder reactors, they could be 10 times safer and more efficient yet.

There is little that annoys me more than people pandering to fear of nuclear energy based on their own ignorance.

There is no greener and safer energy than nuclear (I would note that solar energy is a kind of nuclear energy).

Re:But some artists suck.

[davester666]

Exactly. It's not spelled out. It's just 'everyone put their money in this big pot, and we promise to divvy it up between our artists'. And it's not like this is clearly a 'rental/subscription' or a 'purchase', so it's not really covered by current trade licensing agreements.

And given todays report http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/jared-leto-hits.html is at all correct, that a group can have sales of over 2 million CD's and still 'owe' the label $1.4 million, do you really believe the labels will setup a system that is more than superficially 'verifiable', let alone one that results in most of the money received going to artists?

You sir, are an optimist.