ASCAP is facing a lawsuit claiming it “severely underpays” for so-called production music used by talk and sports radio stations, wrongfully withholding more than $120 million in royalties from their rightful owners. The case claims ASCAP’s policies pay out royalties for only a fraction of the actual performances of such songs, which often play on news, talk or sports radio programs as background music or during segment transitions.
Source: ASCAP Faces $123M Lawsuit Over Production Music on News Radio: ‘Financially Devastating’
PRS paid out GBP £274.9 million (USD $367.6 million) at the current exchange rate) to songwriters, composers and music publishers in December, a 4% increase over the same period a year earlier. In all, 51,500 PRS members will receive a payment this quarter, among them 400 songwriters and composers who will receive royalties for the first time.
Ninety-five per cent of the more than 10,000 people who had their say over how music, novels, films and other works should be protected from copyright infringements by tech companies called for copyright to be strengthened and a requirement for licensing in all cases or no change to copyright law. By contrast, only 3% of people backed the government’s initial preferred tech company-friendly option.
A federal judge on Monday advanced a trio of copyright claims brought by digital publisher Ziff Davis against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, while the artificial intelligence firm won dismissal of several others. Ziff Davis, a global digital media company whose portfolio includes leading brands in technology, shopping, gaming and entertainment, accuses OpenAI of scraping its online content without authorization to train the artificial intelligence chatbot’s language technology.
