PRS for Music Releases New Online Music Licence

PRS for Music, a royalty collecting group based in the UK, has released details about their newest Joint Online Licence (JOL), which has been published online at Prsformusic.com (pdf). The current JOL expires on June 30, and the new deal covers rates charged for download services and subscriptions.

For a download, the rate remains unchanged from the previous JOL at 8 percent of gross revenue. But streaming rates for services like Last.fm will be online later this month, and are of greater importance, given the rising popularity of music that is listenable for free. Spotify, Myspace, and probably Google are just some of the companies that will be affected by the forthcoming “music on demand” rates. Continue reading...

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SXSW Panel: Should Artists Be Paid for Radio Airplay?

The “Should Artists Be Paid for Radio Airplay” panel at the SXSW festival debated whether the United States should adopt the rest of the world’s practice of paying artists and labels when their songs play on the radio. The promotional value of music on the radio, as in free advertising, was deemed irrelevant, because 60 percent of music on the airwaves is at least two years old. Continue reading...

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Creative Commons Launches “Zero” License

Creative Commons has released their newest license, the CC Zero license, which allows you to waive copyright and related rights to your work. According to their public domain dedication page, this means that your work, if associated with the license, could be “freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, or built upon by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.” Read more...

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Warner Music Pulls Videos off YouTube

On Saturday, Warner Music Group ordered Google, the present owner of YouTube, to remove from its site all music videos by its artists, after licensing negotiations broke down the previous day.

Warner said: “We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide,” reports Reuters.

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