A New York appeals court has ruled in favor of Yahoo this weekend, claiming its Launchcast Internet radio service is not required to pay royalties to copyright holders for songs it plays. The losing party was Sony BMG Music.
The claim by Yahoo was that Launchcast did not give users enough controls to be considered “an interactive service,” which would require the royalty fees to be paid.
The judges added that Yahoo would only have to pay licensing fees to SoundExchange, the nonprofit organization that collects royalties for musicians.
“It’s an immediate loss for the recording industry,” notes Rey Sanchez, chairman of the department of music, media and industry at the University of Miami and a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, via Reuters.
“If the service had been deemed interactive, Yahoo would have to negotiate fees with every record label to use their songs. Instead, it only has to pay licensing fees.”
Sony declined comment while Yahoo said nothing more than that they were pleased with the “fair” ruling.
Result for: sony bmg music
WE7.com has launched, and with it comes 500,000 free, ad-supported tracks from Sony BMG and a variety of independent artists.
As the company says, the site is a way for consumers to get the tracks they want “legally, safely and in a format they want”.
We7’s business model allows fans to listen to the music they want, completely free, but each tracks has a “short audio advert onto the front of each track.”
The site also says that the artists and record labels will be paid every time the song is played on the site and that they will be paid from the revenue generated from advertising. We7 hopes the model will curb piracy and provide “a win-win situation for music fans and artists alike.”
Additionally, 30,000 of the tracks can be downloaded and listened to later on portable media devices for free “with the attached advert, which can be removed after a set number of listens, or an amount of elapsed time.”
Result for: sony bmg music
In the recent years no internet music store has come even close to challenging iTunes for the number one spot. With generally every store selling songs and albums at the same price it’s Apple, with the wide-spread iPod, who collects the money. However, now Sony BMG Music and Dada S.P.A. have decided to do something different by selling song for as cheap as 66 cents.
Dada.net offers consumers from the US a limited monthly download plan for a fee of $10. The user can download 15 songs from the selections of both Sony BMG Music and Universal Music Group. According to Sony, Dada.net will also feature in the future songs and artists from other major and indie labels.
The monthly fee of Dada.net will have to be paid as a part of your cell phone bill and therefore it doesn’t work on all of the operators or mobile plans. Also currently the MP3s can be downloaded only to your computer, but downloading music directly to your phone will be made possible in the future.
Dada.net is only available in the United States and Sony has not yet announced any plans to expand abroad.
