SoundExchange, the establishment that has been tasked with collecting royalties for copyright holders and artists from music streaming services on the Internet, satellite radio and maybe traditional radio soon too, has told artists to label their music properly if they wish to receive their royalties.
SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson wrote in Billboard that the company actually has trouble finding out who owns the copyright to some songs it tracks and claims royalties for. He said the organization had about $40 million in royalties that it collected in 2008, which it could not distribute to artists and copyright owners because it couldn’t find them.
Why not? Because the copyright owners didn’t attach enough information to the song. Simson pleaded that at the very least, every song should include metadata identifying the artist, song name, album name, label or copyright owner.
SoundExchange also is holding $39 million for artists and copyright holders that simply have not registered with SoundExchange yet.
Result for: traditional radio
Last month we reported that SoundExchange had killed off Internet radio by upping royalties to levels that cannot be sustained by any company. Pandora, the largest and most popular of current Internet radio companies, admitted that day that they are most likely going to have to shut down if the royalty charges are not lowered.
Yesterday we received an email from a Pandora representative which was very interesting and I will post in its entirety later in this article. In the email, the rep says that the RIAA and SoundExchange have come to their senses and are ready to agree to lower royalties to levels where an Internet company can survive and the trade groups can make the profit they want. It appears there is another roadblock however, one being brought forward by the traditional radio broadcasters, most notably Clear Channel Communications. The entire email as we received it:
Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora;
After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, SoundExchange and the RIAA are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio. But just as we’ve gotten close, large traditional broadcast radio companies have launched a covert lobbying campaign to sabotage our progress.
Yesterday, Congressman Jay Inslee, and several co-sponsors, introduced legislation to give us the extra time we need but the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which represents radio broadcasters such as Clear Channel, has begun intensively pressuring lawmakers to kill the bill. We have just days to keep this from collapsing.
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Result for: traditional radio
AOL has created a new Radio application for the Apple iPhone that will allow users to connect to AOL servers via EDGE, 3G or Wi-Fi and listen to local CBS radio stations. The application won an ‘Apple Design Award’ last week at the annual WWDC.
Making the app even more intriguing is that the service will be free, but ad-supported, just like traditional radio is. There will be over 200 AOL and 150 CBS stations available in 25 different genres.
Apple noted this about the application, “Reliable audio streaming and improved battery life are achieved by using AudioFileServices and AudioQueueServices, while SCNetwork manages the best narrowband or broadband streaming based on whether users are connected via EDGE or Wi-Fi.”
How is the quality though? AOL VP Kevin Conroy says it is “as good as listening to a CD”.
