New Webcasting Deals Reached
Digital music royalty collector SoundExchange has completed four independent agreements with Sirius-XM, College Broadcasters Inc. and the National Religious Broadcasters Music License Committee, which will set the rate structure for the webcasters through 2015. An additional agreement signed late Thursday night will be confirmed publicly in coming weeks, officials said Friday. While the rates and terms are specific to each group, they all involve pre-set annual increases to reflect the rising value of sound recordings.
The deals come on the heels of an announcement earlier this month that a payment formula for "pureplay" services, whose main business is streaming music, had been reached after more than two years of private negotiations. See CongressDaily story here(subscription required). The agreements were negotiated under the Webcaster Settlement Act, which gave SoundExchange the authority to negotiate alternative rates and terms to those set by the Copyright Royalty Board in 2007.
House Foreign Chairman Howard Berman, whose previous leadership on the House Judiciary intellectual property subcommittee was instrumental in bringing negotiators together, cheered the new agreements. "I want to thank all the people who spent long hours in my office working towards a solution that works for artists, webcasters, and most importantly music fans. It was worth every moment to ensure that new technologies recognize that creators should have the opportunity to thrive," he said in a statement.
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