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Spotify, Google, Pandora, Amazon Go To US Appeals Court To Overturn Royalty Increase (variety.com)
Spotify, Google, Pandora and Amazon have teamed up to appeal a controversial ruling by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board that, if it goes through, would increase payouts to songwriters by 44%, Variety is reporting. From the report: A joint statement from the first three of those companies reads: "The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), in a split decision, recently issued the U.S. mechanical statutory rates in a manner that raises serious procedural and substantive concerns. If left to stand, the CRB's decision harms both music licensees and copyright owners. Accordingly, we are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review the decision."
The four companies all filed with the court separately. Sources say that Apple Music is alone among the major streaming services in not planning to appeal -- as confirmed by songwriters' orgs rushing to heap praise on Apple while condemning the seemingly unified front of the other digital companies.
The four companies all filed with the court separately. Sources say that Apple Music is alone among the major streaming services in not planning to appeal -- as confirmed by songwriters' orgs rushing to heap praise on Apple while condemning the seemingly unified front of the other digital companies.
Whoever wins, we lose.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
More forced royalties makes the services more expensive to run, which in turn is making the subscription more expensive.
A more expensive subscription means lots of users will drop out and go back to pirating, meaning absolutely no revenue from them for copyright owners. Models probably predict that more people would leave than is offset by the increased revenue.
The notable difference between Apple Music and the other services is that Apple never cared for it and can afford to run it at a loss.
Presumably the purpose of copyrights is the public good, not the enrichment of anyone.
there are some ways I can think of that this works
1. Reward the copyright holders (via roylaties). The purpose of the reward is to encourage the copyright holder to share with the public their materials and perhaps encourage these creative people to make more things the public needs/wants.
2. It enables the creation of a market place. Market places are efficient methods of distribution. Without them the impact on the public of a new good isn't felt. SO we need market places and the abilility to sell rights for royalties fosters the creation of this.
There's some tension between these in that exorbitant royalties would crush the market place lower the multiplier on distribution and decreasing the impact on the public.
In a completely free market an artists profit motive might tend to optimize this because they would want to maximize royalty*copies sold. SO they maximimize both their incentive to share and the distribution in a balanced way.
One problem comes up if the royalty is fixed externally. Then there's no mechanism to price-adjust for that maximization. It's kind of like a command economy rather than a capitlaist one. And that was always the central flaw of the pure communist model-- setting those prices without the information gathered by the market on demand results in sub optimal production.
One the other hand you also can kill a market if the distributors have to negotiate individuall with every single person. Thus setting a fixed royalty may make some markets possible.
SO the only real argument google and others have is that somehow the command economy has selected the wrong royalty rate. I wonder if they would make that argument if the rate were set too low?? that too would harm the public as well. So we can't really trust them to make this argument. Better to trust the artists who have an incentive to maximize public impact.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If Amazon, Spotify etc will succeed, it'll wont have to increase the payouts either. -> Win and they can tell the artist Apple was on their side. Perhaps even increase the payout by a few small percent to become to more attractive to artists again.
If the lawsuit fails, Amazon, Spotify etc will be the bad bullies with egg on their faces. -> Win for Apple again. No legal cost and they have positioned themselves at the side of the artists.
Whatever happens, Apple doesn't lose by letting others take the fall or doing the work.
Clever.
It means that the copyright owners have to pay the artists more rather than keeping the profit for themselves.
"Copyright owner" is generally trotted out to make it sound like the publisher, that usually owns the copyright, is actually the artist(s) that originally created the work.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.