08 Sep, 2017
Music Royalty Fee
Music royalty fee
The face of music copyright law is quickly changing. Through the internet, users have access to literally billions of songs and playlists from all around the world and from every time period. Similarly, musicians and singers can post their latest works music royalty fee on social network websites such as MySpace or YouTube. Many popular artists today got their start by being discovered on MySpace rather than through the traditional record company route.
Traditional Royalties: Performance Rights Organization
As you can tell from the name, Performance Rights Organizations deal with performances, especially those being done publicly. What they do is collect royalties from the parties that use copyrighted works, and distribute them to the copyright holder Royalties are small fees charged every time a copyrighted song is played or performed. For example, if a television station wishes to use a song in one of their advertisements, the PRO will collect the royalty fee from the station and distribute it to the copyright holder.
There are differences between ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, and artists can register with one according to their musical needs. For example, BMI tends to focus on popular and commercial artists. SESAC is a newer PRO, has fewer artists in its registry and tends to focus on artists who are new to the scene such as indie artists. The music royalty fee basic concept for all the PRO's is the same though, which is the protection of copyrights and distribution of royalties.
How PRO's Collect and Distribute Royalties: Use Tracking
In the past, PRO's understandably had difficulty keeping track of every instance in which a song was used commercially for profit. Currently this has become easier due to digital technology. PRO's keep track of royalties through what is called "use tracking". Some PRO's now assign every song a "digital fingerprint" that registers every instance of commercial public use of a song with their database. This is crucial especially with transmissions over the internet.
PRO's and Internet Broadcasts
One of the major ways in which music copyright laws is changing has to do with digital transmissions. Together these laws now require that users of copyrighted sound recordings pay the copyright owner for digital transmissions over the internet. Digital transmissions include such mediums as internet radio and music royalty fee.
There has been much controversy over these acts, mainly because of the rates for digital transmission fees that they set. These royalty fee rates differ drastically from medium to medium. For example, Internet radio users would be charged 2.9 cents/hour per listener, while satellite radio users would be charged only 1.6 cents/hour. Traditional radio station users, also known as "terrestrial radio", would be charged no fees, since there is no digital transmission involved.
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