“Songwriters will get a larger cut of revenue from streaming services after a court handed technology companies a big defeat,” Lananh Nguyen and Lucas Shaw report for Bloomberg. “The Copyright Royalty Board ruled that songwriters will get at least a 15.1 percent share of streaming revenues over the next five years, from a previous 10.5 percent. That’s the largest rate increase in CRB history, according to a statement from the National Music Publishers’ Association.”
“The decision is a major victory for songwriters, who have long complained they are insufficiently uncompensated by on-demand music services,” Nguyen and Shaw report. “Streaming services account for the largest share of music industry sales in the U.S., while global streaming sales jumped 60 percent in 2016, according to the IFPI.”
Nguyen and Shaw report, “The decision was made after a trial in which NMPA and the Nashville Songwriters Association International represented music publishers and songwriters against Alphabet Inc., which owns YouTube and Google; Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Spotify Technology and Pandora Media Inc.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The big losers here are Spotify and Pandora. Apple, Amazon, and Google each have enough money to pay songwriters 15.1% until the end of time.