Music Copyright Value Hit $32.5B in 2020, With Streaming Taking Its Biggest Slice Yet; Billboard, November 18, 2021

Glenn Peoples, Billboard; Music Copyright Value Hit $32.5B in 2020, With Streaming Taking Its Biggest Slice Yet

"Global music copyright grew $800 million to a record $32.5 billion in 2020, according to an Omdia report released Tuesday (Nov. 16) by Music & Copyright. Authored by Will Page, a former chief economist at Spotify, and Omdia analyst Simon Dyson, The Global Value of Music Copyright aggregates revenues for record labels and publishers for streaming, purchases and public performances.

For record labels, the pandemic limited annual revenue growth to $1.5 billion, bringing it to $21.1 billion. Streaming was a “stay-at-home stock,” as the report described termed it, that benefitted from consumers’ need for entertainment when public interaction was limited. Not that 2020 was without challenges. Ad-supported streaming was hit by a global pull-back in ad spending. Brick-and-mortar sales slowed, however, despite some retailers’ efforts to ease losses with curbside pick-up and mail orders. But labels fared better than their counterparts, music publishers. Music publishers were especially exposed to the pandemic’s ill effects on public performances from live venues, retail shops, fitness studios and other businesses shut down — some permanently — because of extended restrictions imposed by local governments. As a result, music publishers’ global income in 2020 fell by $700 million to $10.4 billion."

How Music Copyright Lawsuits Are Scaring Away New Hits; The Rolling Stone, January 9, 2020

Amy X. Wang, The Rolling Stone;

How Music Copyright Lawsuits Are Scaring Away New Hits

 "Artists, songwriters, producers, and labels are now awaiting the next Zeppelin verdict, with many hoping that a judgment in Page and Plant’s favor could unwind some of the headache-inducing ambiguity introduced by the “Blurred Lines” ruling. Others see the case, which has a chance of going all the way up to the Supreme Court, as a reopening of Pandora’s box. Will the latest ruling clarify the scope of music copyright — or muddy it even further? “At what point is an element of creative expression protectable?” says media intellectual-property attorney Wesley Lewis. “Litigators are all hoping for more clarity.”"

Copyright infringement suit filed against Led Zeppelin for 'Stairway to Heaven'; CNN, 6/3/14

Lisa Respers France, CNN; Copyright infringement suit filed against Led Zeppelin for 'Stairway to Heaven' :

"A lawsuit has been filed claiming that the iconic Led Zeppelin song "Stairway to Heaven" was far from original.

The suit, filed on May 31 in the United States District Court Eastern District of Pennsylvania, was brought by the estate of the late musician Randy California against the surviving members of Led Zeppelin and their record label. The copyright infringement case alleges that the Zeppelin song was taken from the single "Taurus" by the 1960s band Spirit, for whom California served as lead guitarist...

The estate is seeking court ordered damages and writing credit for California, born Randy Craig Wolfe. Part of the defense includes a printed interview conducted with California prior to his death from drowning in 1997. In the 1997 interview with Listener Magazine, the guitarist claims that some of the music from "Stairway to Heaven" was taken from his group's song.

RESPECT Bill Would Put Golden Oldies Under Federal Copyright; Billboard, 5/29/14

Glenn Peoples, Billboard; RESPECT Bill Would Put Golden Oldies Under Federal Copyright:

"A new bill could help artists and labels collect royalties on the digital performance of older recordings while adding to the royalty expenses of the digital services that play them.

Revealed Thursday, the RESPECT Act was introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and co-sponsored by Rep. George Holding (R-NC) and several other members of the House. The bill would place pre-1972 sound recordings under federal law. Because the performance right for these older recordings currently falls under states' laws, digital music services such as Pandora and SiriusXM do not pay royalties on them. (These services do pay publishers for the performance of the compositions, however.)

Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake."

Defining and Demanding a Musician’s Fair Shake in the Internet Age; New York Times, 9/30/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Defining and Demanding a Musician’s Fair Shake in the Internet Age: "As the leader of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, Mr. Lowery had a modicum of fame in the 1980s and ’90s. But over the last year, he has become a celebrity among musicians for speaking out about artists’ shrinking paychecks and the influence of Silicon Valley over copyright, economics and public discourse. In public appearances and no-holds-barred blog posts, Mr. Lowery, 53, has come to represent the anger of musicians in the digital age. When an NPR Music intern confessed in a blog post last year that she paid very little for her music, he scolded her in a 3,800-word open letter that framed the issue in moral terms... The issue has become hot as technology companies like Pandora and Google have replaced major record labels as the villains of choice for industry critics."

Clear Channel-Warner Music Deal Rewrites the Rules on Royalties; New York Times, 9/12/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Clear Channel-Warner Music Deal Rewrites the Rules on Royalties: "On Thursday, the company announced a deal with the Warner Music Group that would for the first time allow the label and its acts to collect royalties when their songs were played on Clear Channel’s 850 broadcast stations. In exchange, Clear Channel will receive a favorable rate in the growing but expensive world of online streaming...In an arrangement that has long irked record companies and led to many lobbying standoffs in Washington, terrestrial broadcasters are not required to pay royalties to labels and performing artists for the records they play on the air. On the other side, Internet radio services like Pandora, as well as broadcasters like Clear Channel through its station Web sites and iHeartRadio app, pay these royalties, but they have complained that the statutory rates for licensing music are too high. (Both terrestrial and online radio also pay music publishers, which control songwriting rights.)"

Record Labels Sue Sirius XM Over the Use of Older Music; New York Times, 9/11/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Record Labels Sue Sirius XM Over the Use of Older Music: "Another, Feb. 15, 1972 — when federal copyright protection began to apply to recordings — has less recognition. But a recent string of lawsuits argue that licensing issues tied to that date may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to singers and record labels. If the suits are successful, they could also bring a headache of liability to satellite and Internet radio services. On Wednesday, the three largest record companies — Sony, Universal and Warner, along with ABKCO, an independent that controls many of the Rolling Stones’ early music rights — sued Sirius XM Radio in a California court, saying that the satellite service used recordings from before 1972 without permission. Even though federal copyright protection does not apply to these recordings, the suits say that they are still covered by state law."

A Revamped Myspace Site Faces a Problem With Rights; New York Times, 1/20/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; A Revamped Myspace Site Faces a Problem With Rights: "The new Myspace, which like the old MySpace lets people listen to huge numbers of songs free, has won early praise for its sleek design. But while it has said its intention is to help artists, it may already have a problem with some of the independent record labels that supply much of its content. Although Myspace boasts the biggest library in digital music — more than 50 million songs, it says — a group representing thousands of small labels says the service is using its members’ music without permission."

Lil Wayne, Birdman hit with copyright suit in NYC; AP, via Yahoo News, 10/30/09

Jennifer Peltz, AP, via Yahoo News; Lil Wayne, Birdman hit with copyright suit in NYC:

"A Florida man wants rappers Lil Wayne and Birdman to show him respect — for using his voice in an album track called just that.

Thomas Marasciullo filed a copyright infringement lawsuit Friday in a Manhattan federal court against the rappers, their record label and various music distribution outlets.

The lawsuit said Cash Money Records had him cut some "'Italian-styled' spoken word recordings" in 2006, then used them without pay or permission on "Respect" and other tracks from the rappers' joint 2006 album "Like Father, Like Son" and Birdman's 2007 "5 (Star) Stunna.""

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091031/ap_en_mu/us_people_lil_wayne

K.K.R. and Bertelsmann May Make Sweet Music; New York Times, 7/9/09

New York Times; K.K.R. and Bertelsmann May Make Sweet Music:

"The fund run by Henry Kravis is teaming with the German media group Bertelsmann to pounce on some of the choicest bits of the music business — copyrights to songs.

Given the turbulence in the recorded music sector, and the ownership of libraries like Michael Jackson’s up in the air, they’ll likely have a wealth of assets from which to choose, the publication suggests.

Widespread digital distribution of music has hampered the ability of companies like Warner Music Group and EMI to make money from their traditional activity of finding new artists and marketing their tunes. Yet, their copyright businesses continue to produce profit, Breakingviews notes. In the quarter that ended in March, Warner’s publishing division posted 40 percent operating margins, four times those of its recorded music division."

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/kkr-and-bertelsmann-may-make-sweet-music-together/?scp=1&sq=copyright%20emi&st=cse

Play it again: Tenenbaum team tries to toss MediaSentry evidence; Ars Technica, 6/29/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; Play it again: Tenenbaum team tries to toss MediaSentry evidence:

"The year's second major P2P trial kicks off in one month, and Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson wants to mount some of the same attacks that failed in the first case. Nesson argues that all of the RIAA's MediaSentry investigative evidence must be banned from trial, as the company violated wiretap law and private detective licensing law."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/second-times-the-charm-tenenbaum-team-try-to-toss-mediasentry-evidence.ars

Thomas verdict: willful infringement, $1.92 million penalty; Ars Technica, 6/18/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; Thomas verdict: willful infringement, $1.92 million penalty:

"A new lawyer, a new jury, and a new trial were not enough to save Jammie Thomas-Rasset. In a repeat of the verdict from her first federal trial, Thomas-Rasset was found liable for willfully infringing all 24 copyrights controlled by the four major record labels at issue in the case. The jury awarded the labels damages totaling a whopping $1.92 million. As the dollar amount was read in court, Thomas-Rasset gasped and her eyes widened...

[Defense Attorney Kiwi] Camara acknowledged the [record labels] settlement offer and said that his side would certainly investigate it, but he made clear that he intends to file numerous motions if Thomas-Rasset wants to continue the fight. Motions on the constitutionality of such massive damages and other issues can still be filed with the judge, and then there's the entire matter of an appeal.

Thomas-Rasset sounds inclined to fight on. The case was "one for the RIAA, not the end of the war," she said.

As for Camara, he intends to press ahead with his class-action lawsuit against the recording industry, in which he will take up the daunting task of trying to claw back all the money that the recording industry has collected in the course of its legal campaign to date.

A vigorous defense from Kiwi Camara and Joe Sibley was not enough to sway the jury, which had only to find that a preponderance of the evidence pointed to Thomas-Rasset. The evidence clearly pointed to her machine, even correctly identifying the MAC address of both her cable modem and her computer's Ethernet port. When combined with the facts about her hard drive replacement (and her failure to disclose those facts to the investigators), her "tereastarr" username, and the new theories that she offered yesterday for the first time in more than three years, jurors clearly remained unconvinced by her protestations of innocence.

Camara suspects that the jury thought Thomas-Rasset was a liar and were "angry about it," thus leading to the $80,000 per-song damages.

The case is a reminder that in civil trials, simply raising some doubt about liability is not enough; lawyers need to raise lots of doubt to win the case, and Camara and Sibley were unable to do so here.

The jury found Thomas-Rasset's conduct to be willful, which means that statutory damages under the Copyright Act can range from $750 per infringement up to $150,000. In his closing statement, defense lawyer Joe Sibley made clear that even the minimum award would run $18,000 (24 songs x $750 = $18,000), an amount that he said was unfair and crippling to Thomas-Rasset. The jury decided that the per-song penalty would be $80,000, for a total damage award of $1.92 million, over $1.7 million more than the award in her first trial."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jammie-thomas-retrial-verdict.ars

When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won, New York Times, 1/7/09

Book Review of "Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age" by Steve Knopper, Via New York Times: When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won:

"Mr. Knopper, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, provides a wide-angled, morally complicated view of the current state of the music business. He doesn’t let those rippers and burners among us — that is, those who download digital songs without paying for them, and you know who you are — entirely off the hook. But he suggests that with even a little foresight, record companies could have adapted to the Internet’s brutish and quizzical new realities and thrived...

It’s too bad his interesting arguments and observations are wedged into such an uningratiating book. The prose in “Appetite for Self-Destruction” is undercooked, packed with clichés (the stakes are always high, people constantly take the fall, one-two punches are thrown) and awkward descriptions...

What’s more, Mr. Knopper apparently did not get access to many of the major players in this tale, including Mr. Jobs. His account rehashes material covered in earlier, better books, including “Hit Men” by Fredric Dannen and “The Perfect Thing” by Steven Levy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/books/07garn.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=when%20labels%20fough%20digital&st=cse

DRM-Free iTunes Seems Unlikely, Despite Report, Wired.com, 12/9/08

Via Wired.com: DRM-Free iTunes Seems Unlikely, Despite Report:

"French technology site ElectronLibre claims that Apple will remove DRM from every song in the iTunes store today. We're not so sure...

If ElectronLibre's information (translation) is accurate, the deadlock between Apple and the three largest record labels has broken, and Apple can finally start selling music from all the world's labels without its Fairplay copyright protection. That is an enormous "if," and the signs don't point to it."

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/drm-free-itunes.html

Once More, With Feeling: Copyright Is Not A Welfare System For Musicians, TechDirt, 11/26/08

Via TechDirt: Once More, With Feeling: Copyright Is Not A Welfare System For Musicians:

"Performance rights in the UK only last 50 years, so music performed in the 60s has started to move into the public domain, and some musicians are freaking out...

First of all, copyright was never intended to be a welfare system. Studio musicians knew the terms of the deal, and if they chose to rely on earnings from a single performance in 1958 for 50 years, it's difficult to see why the government should bail them out for their own short-sighted thinking, and their decision to live off of a single performance for all those years...

But, of course, that won't stop the propaganda fueled by the record labels who stand to make a nice, totally unearned, profit from an extension. They've put together a video of these "poor studio musicians" begging the government for a handout...

The UK government should reject this blatant and unfair renegotiation of terms, and tell the musicians if they want to ask someone for a handout, why not turn to the record labels who apparently didn't pay them enough in the first place."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081126/0807212958.shtml

Web radio founder visits here to explain Pandora - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/13/08

Web radio founder visits here to explain Pandora:

"Pandora founder and chief strategy officer Tim Westergren will be in town tomorrow to talk to Pandora listeners about the service. The meet-up will be held at the SouthSide Works Cinema at 7 p.m. Admission is free, and the event is open to anyone who wants to learn more about Pandora...

Westergren has been one of the most vocal Webcasters leading the charge in the ongoing battle to reduce per-song-played copyright fees Webcasters are now required to pay to record labels. The increased fees for streaming music online were set by the Copyright Royalty Board last year.

Commercial radio only pays royalties to composers and not to artists or record companies."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08287/919482-28.stm

Musicians Realize They Need Their Own Lobbying Group - Techdirt, 10/6/08

Musicians Realize They Need Their Own Lobbying Group:

"It's almost amazing it's taken this long, but a bunch of musicians, including Radiohead, are now forming their own lobbying/bargaining group, called the Featured Artists' Coalition. One of the goals, actually, is to put pressure on the record labels to allow the musicians to retain the copyright on their music, rather than handing it over to the labels...
Though, my fear is that this new group really just promotes more of the same, and doesn't focus on new business model opportunities, but again looks for ways to "protect" rather than to innovate."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081005/2310512458.shtml