Rights

The Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), the Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL), Music Creators North America (MCNA) are extremely pleased that the specific terms they have championed for the past year before the  Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) to increase the mechanical rate in regard to physical product and downloads have apparently been adopted in principle by the major record labels and music publishing companies.

Source: SGA, SCL & MCNA Applaud Mechanical Royalty Rate Increase In the US

The settlement provides that songwriter royalties will increase automatically each year of the rate period in connection with the Consumer Price Index. The agreement will now be considered by the Copyright Royalty Board. The CRB previously declined to approve an earlier agreement covering physical sales and downloads largely due to concerns over what it considered “static” rates.

Source: Record labels and publishers ink major settlement, moving from 9.1 cents to 12 cents per track for US mechanical royalties on physical sales

Last year when Facebook blocked news in Australia in response to potential legislation making platforms pay publishers for content, it also took down the pages of Australian hospitals, emergency services and charities. It publicly called the resulting chaos “inadvertent.” Internally, the pre-emptive strike was hailed as a strategic masterstroke.

Source: Facebook Deliberately Caused Havoc in Australia to Influence New Law, Whistleblowers Say

A long-running class action lawsuit against YouTube alleging mass copyright infringement and failures in YouTube’s enforcement system has raised an interesting question. Does YouTube’s ‘Autoplay’ feature, which effectively sees the platform take control of what content is shown, undermine YouTube’s safe harbor protections under the DMCA?

Source: Does YouTube’s Autoplay Feature Hurt Its DMCA Safe Harbor Protection? * TorrentFreak

Whenever the idea of TikTok becoming a record label is raised in music biz circles, the suggestion is typically scoffed at. But the evidence is building that such a description might one day fit. In March, TikTok launched its own distribution service. Dubbed ‘SoundOn’, it lets artists upload their music to TikTok, RESSO, and other platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Instagram.

Source: Is TikTok (or ByteDance) slowly morphing into a record company?

Many music lovers regularly turn to streaming platforms to listen to the works of classical composers like Vivaldi and Debussy. Now Leipzig’s tourism board has looked into the revenue that would have been generated by these millions of listeners at the time these pieces were composed. They estimate that rights holders are remunerated with 0.0037 dollars per stream.

Source: Forbes India – How Much Money Would Mozart And Beethoven Make From Music Streaming?

More than a decade after U.S. lawmakers scuttled the controversial SOPA legislation that would’ve required ISPs to block pirate sites, a US court has demonstrated that the ability to block sites has been available all along. Injunctions issued in response to lawsuits against three pirate streaming services require every ISP in the United States to prevent subscribers from accessing them.

Source: US Court Orders Every ISP in the United States to Block Illegal Streaming Sites * TorrentFreak

SoundCloud has revealed a series of updated stats about its payout system’s progress. These stats include the fact that 135,000 independent artists are now getting paid through Fan-Powered Royalties (FPR). This marks a 30% growth in the volume of artists who have signed up to monetize their music via FPR on the platform since March 2021.

Source: 135,000 artists are now getting paid through SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered Royalties platform

The Court of Justice of the European Union has dismissed Poland’s request to annul Article 17 of the Copyright Directive. The Court finds that the legislation, which could boost the use of ‘upload filters,’ does not violate freedom of expression, as long as they can sufficiently distinguish between illegal and legal content. This effectively puts an end to years of opposition.

Source: ‘Upload Filters’ Don’t Violate Freedom of Expression, EU Top Court Rules * TorrentFreak

A man at the center of a copyright scam that abused YouTube’s Content ID system to fraudulently obtain more than $23m to the detriment of artists has entered a plea agreement with the US government. Webster Batista Fernandez wrongfully claimed to own the rights to more than 50,000 tracks and illegally monetized user uploads for years.

Source: Man Pleads Guilty to $23m YouTube Content ID Scam * TorrentFreak