As discussed earlier, the Copyright Royalty Board met today to discuss raising the royalty rates given to music publishers for digital sales. The result? They did nothing! They froze the royalty rate for music publishers at 9.1 cents per download. iTunes ain’t gonna close down. Prices aren’t going up. Nothing to see here. Move along now. [CNET]
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By reading the press releases from NMPA (“NMPA Hails Copyright Board’s Rate Decision Positive Result for Songwriters and Music Publishers”) and Harry Fox (“HFA Ready to Implement New Digital Era Mechanical Royalty Rates”), I assumed they had raised the rates! I guess I was wrong. MAybe NMPA and Harry Fox were juste happy the Board didnt cut more royalties.
@Droop: Actually they may have attached mechanicals to digital sales. I need to check this out further
The HFA press release refers to both the decision today on physical product, permanent digital downloads, ringtones and also the press release from last week’s settlement regarding streaming and limited downloads.
In other words, both sides came to an agreement regarding streaming configurations, yet the Judges had to decide on the rest of the rates in question.
With the industry going in the direction it is with physical product, the labels definitely did not want to keep paying on a per unit basis. A percentage of revenue structure would have been more beneficial to them, hence NMPA stating this was a positive result.
The part that shocked me more was the 24 cents for ringtones.