Massively Increasing Music Licensing Fees For Clubs Down Under Massively Backfires

from the finding-non-covered-music dept

We've noted the ridiculous and self-defeating efforts by many music collections societies around the world to jack up their rates by ridiculous amounts. None was more ridiculous than the attempt in Australia by the PPCA where some of the rate changes would rocket up from figures like $125/year... to $19,344/year. Well, it looks like it's already backfiring badly. Reader Dan alerts us to the news that the organization that represents night clubs and similar businesses in Australia, appropriately named Clubs Australia, has set up a system whereby the organization will specifically go out and seek music by artists not covered by the collections effort, and distribute that music to clubs and other establishments. Then, these clubs, gyms, restaurants and the like can tell the PPCA to take a hike, and still play music. We'd already seen that some clubs had started doing this on their own, but now they've teamed up to share such music with each other in order to get out from under the PPCA entirely. So, nice job PPCA. Once again, in your effort to get people to pay more for every single use, you end up making it that much more difficult for anyone to actually hear -- or care about -- the musicians you supposedly represent.

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Dutch Collection Society Backs Down Slightly On Video Embeds

from the but-not-really dept

Dennis Laumen alerts us to an update on the story concerning Dutch music collection society Buma/Stemra's plan to charge bloggers for embedding YouTube videos on their site. After the story got lots of publicity, Buma appears to have backed down ever so slightly, saying that "amateur" bloggers are off the hook. But, the definition of "amateur" is basically only if you don't have any ads. Put up some Google AdSense... and suddenly you're a "pro" who has to pay up.

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Dutch Collection Society Looks To Charge Bloggers For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the pay-up...-again dept

Over the past year, we've noticed an explosion in ridiculous attempts by music collection societies (often totally clueless about technology) to extend their ability to collect for positively ridiculous things (while also looking to significantly increase their collection rates). The latest, sent in by Dennis Laumen, is that the Dutch collection society, Buma/Stemra, is claiming that it's going to start charging bloggers 130 euros for every 6 videos they embed. This is, of course, technologically clueless. The embedding of a video doesn't change the fact that it's actually playing from and hosted at the original site (such as YouTube). All embedding does is allow the video to appear via the other page, even though, technically, it's all still happening at its original location. Claiming that this is somehow a "new" publication of the content is technologically incorrect.

This is somewhat similar to ASCAP's recent technologically clueless claim that embedding YouTube videos should count as a public performance (along with its other recent claims that iTunes 30-second previews and your mobile phone ringtones should also be counted as public performances). You sort of get the feeling that many of these collection societies came to the conclusion about two years ago that they're functionally obsolete, and rather than adapt to the times, they've all agreed to the same basic principle of going out in a blaze of glory. They're trying to vastly increase rates while covering any and ever attempt to use music in any way, bleeding everyone dry while making it that much more difficult for up-and-coming acts to get heard (since venues that promote them can't pay the crazy rates) and (even better) setting up their payout mechanisms to massively favor the top acts.

For the most part, these collection societies are simply being greedy, without putting a single thought towards actually helping composers and songwriters. They're looking for every single penny they could possibly collect today, and ignoring the medium and long-term impact of trying to charge for any sort of promotional behavior.

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Monopoly Rents: Canadian Collection Society Wants To Massively Increase Rates

from the silence-the-music dept

In the last few months, we've noticed that collections societies around the world are getting desperate for any possible way to collect more money. It's really stunning just how many of these sorts of stories we've seen, all over the globe. It's as if all the collections societies got together and said "how can we squeeze more money out of absolutely anything -- even if it kills off the golden goose," and then set about putting that plan into action. From Australia to Sweden to the UK to the US to Germany, we get story after story after story of incredibly short-sighted collections societies either (a) pushing the gov't to allow them to extort charge larger fees to venues or (b) massively expanding what they consider to be a public performance that requires a royalty. These societies are taking an incredibly short-sighted view. They're causing more and more venues to stop playing music altogether, thus harming everyone.

Mr. Tunes alerts us to the fact that this is now happening in Canada as well, where a smaller collection society, the Neighbouring Rights Collective of Canada, is demanding massive increases in fees, as well as an expansion of what's covered. Of course, SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, already collects fees in Canada, but apparently these are different fees -- and they're much higher than SOCAN's. When that fact is pointed out to the NRCC person, his response is simply that SOCAN's rates were too low. Apparently, they'd rather shut venues down rather than have them help promote music. Brilliant.

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Taiwanese Collections Society Tells Singer He Can't Post His Own Music

from the whoops dept

William writes in with the following tale:

"The Taiwanese music performance and copy right society called MUST, which is similar to the PRS in Britian, has send a take down notice to a popular Taiwanese blog hosting site, Wretch, because one of the user has posted copyrighted music on their blog. The offending blog was taken down and contents deleted.

The catch on this is that the person who posted the music, Shia Ho Shen (English artist name: A Chord), posted music that he himself wrote and performed. He sent an email to MUST asking about the situation and received a standard form letter telling him that copyrighted material are protected intellectual property and implied that he has no right to authorize himself for posting his own material.

Apparently, A Chord's previous agency, without his consent, has signed him up with MUST and thus MUST has all right to authorize his content and collect fees -- and block him from posting his own music.

After this incident A Chord has started the process to remove himself from MUST's artist list, started a new blog and posted this whole incident and posted all his songs online at StreetVoice for fans to listen to before purchasing his CD.

The specific links he sent, including to the blog post itself, are in Mandarin. Here's the Google translation which isn't all that clear. Also this is from a little while ago, so I'm not sure if there's been any updates... but if folks out there have any updates, please fill us in via the comments.

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New Zealand Hairdresser Gets Bill For Playing Music In Her Shop

from the public-performances... dept

For years, we've questioned why it makes sense for various songwriters' collection societies to charge a license fee for playing music in various restaurants and shops. In the past, most of the focus on enforcement has been in restaurants and bars, where music is more central to the experience -- but even then, it's always seemed like the music helps draw more interest in people going out and actually paying that musician for something. It's promotional. However, in the past few years, collections groups have become a lot more aggressive. From going after auto repair shops because their mechanics listened to radios in the garage that customers could hear in the waiting room (public performance!) to police stations where cops listened to music too loud (public performance!), these rights societies consistently seem to be shooting themselves in their collective feet.

The latest, sent in by Lawrence D'Oliveiro, involves a hairdresser in New Zealand who had the temerity to have a radio playing in her shop (public performance!). Of course, the real solution to this isn't to pay, but to stop playing music. Music is not central to the hairdressing process, though, by not playing music, the shop would certainly seem a lot less welcoming. Either way, the whole thing seems backwards. If they're playing the music off the radio, then it's been licensed already, and if it's off a personal CD or MP3 player, it's been paid for in other ways.

We're still waiting for the day when one of these collections societies goes after someone playing music in their car with the top or windows down (public performance!) or maybe someone on a beach with a radio (public performance!). Perhaps what they really want is for everyone to do everything with their own personal music players and earphones jacked in. There should be no sharing or promoting of music whatsoever without a special license.

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