Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the American Music Fairness Act bill which proposes to adopt a new music royalty to be paid by over-the-air radio stations. The royalty would be payable to SoundExchange for the public performance of sound recordings. This means that the money collected would be paid to performing artists... Continue Reading…
This week it was announced that the Radio Music License Committee, the organization that represents the commercial radio industry in its negotiations with performing rights organizations over the public performance rights in musical works (the musical compositions – the words and music to any song), had entered into settlement agreements with both ASCAP and BMI... Continue Reading…
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. On our Broadcast Law Blog, we discussed the National Music Publishers Association’s announcement that it had sent Spotify a take-down... Continue Reading…
For years, we have warned about the need to license music in podcasts – and how such licenses need to be obtained directly from copyright holders. We’ve noted demand notices sent to podcasters causing those podcasters to pull their programs from various distribution platforms (see, for instance, our articles here and here). We warned that,... Continue Reading…
This week, I spent some time at the Podcast Movement Annual Convention, this year held in the DC area. While the convention is always a good time to catch up with industry friends and to spot new trends (AI was, of course, a topic that was discussed on several panels as it is at virtually... Continue Reading…
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The FCC has sent an e-mail, apparently to all broadcasters, regarding the cybersecurity of broadcast stations that use the DASDEC... Continue Reading…
All media companies, including broadcasters, webcasters, podcasters and others, need to consider carefully their advertising production after the big penalties imposed on Google and iHeart for broadcast commercials where local DJs promoted the Pixel 4 phone. Promotions included statements that clearly implied that the announcers had used the phone, including statements that it was “my... Continue Reading…
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. Following up on its proposals from last summer to clean up radio technical rules that were inconsistent, outdated, or inaccurate,... Continue Reading…
Last week, we discussed the controversy started by Neil Young removing his music from Spotify because of its carriage of Joe Rogan’s podcast. In that article, we looked at the relationship between music royalties and the decision of Spotify and other music services to emphasize podcasts and other talk programming over music. Today, we will... Continue Reading…