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The Performance Rights Act

Full text from The Performance Rights Act from the U.S. House of Representatives

Legal

House Subcommittee Approves Performance Rights Bill

The House Subcommittee on the Internet and Intellectual Property voted today to recommend the Performance Rights Act, a bill requiring over-the-air radio stations to pay royalties to labels and artists, to the floor of the House

Performing Rights

ASCAP Board Refers 1,331 Signature Ballot Petition Rule to Committee

At their most recent board meeting in June, the ASCAP Board of Directors referred the controversial 1,331 signature requirement for members who wish to petition to appear on the Board of Directors ballot to the ASCAP Board Governance Committee for further review

Publishing

HFA Catalog Crosses Two Million Song Mark

Music rights licensing organization The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA) has announced that it now represents over 2 million songs for licensing within the U.S.

Record Labels

New Business Models Boost Income for British Record Labels

While physical and digital music sales continue to represent a huge proportion of record companies’ income, there are signs that new revenue streams will contribute substantial additional revenue in years to come.

Online Music

Blue Pie Licenses The Orchard Catalog

Blue Pie has licensed the Orchard catalog through their Australasian partner AmpHead Music to commercialize the catalog across a number of white label retail stores

Opinions

Thoughts on the IREA

A significant difference between the Internet Radio Equality Act (IREA) and the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decision is that the IREA uses a revenue-based structure for calculating royalties while the CRB decision uses a per-performance structure. My first point in this column is that a revenue-based structure creates incentives in the marketplace that will devalue [...]

More Industry News

The Local Radio Freedom Act

Full text of The Local Radio Freedom Act from the U.S. House of Representatives

Federal Court Decides License Fees to Be Paid to ASCAP by AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo!

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York today made public a decision in the proceeding to determine reasonable license fees to be paid to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) by AOL (Time Warner Inc.) , RealNetworks Inc., and Yahoo! Inc. for their online performance of [...]

PRS Announces Largest Ever £110m (US$216.7m) UK Royalty Distribution

Composers and songwriters around the world are receiving their biggest ever quarterly payment of royalties for the performances of their music in the UK.
PRS, the Performing Right Society, collects and pays royalties to songwriters, composers and music publishers is this week making its first quarter royalty distribution for 2008 totaling £110m (US$216.7m)- the largest ever [...]

GEMA Wins Injunction Against VideoTube

An interim injunction granted by the Cologne Regional Court prohibits the video-sharing site VideoTube from broadcasting videos containing musical works in the GEMA catalogue. VideoTube recently broken off licensing negotiations with GEMA.
VideoTube allows users to upload and download videos, similar to YouTube. A large number of the videos use musical works from GEMA’s repertoire; in [...]