In the last two weeks, David Oxenford has, at two different conferences, moderated panels on digital music rights and licenses.  At the Digital Music Forum East, in New York City on February 25, 2010, his panel focused on rights and licenses generally, featuring panelists from SoundExchange, BMI, the Harry Fox Agency, Rightsflow and MediaNet.  As a handout, David provided copies of Davis Wright Tremaine’s Guide to The Basics of Digital Music Licensing, available here.  Discussion on the panel included the question of when there is a public performance versus when there is a reproduction of a copyrighted piece of music (see our post here), royalties for interactive streaming (see our post here), and the difference between a sound recording and a musical composition, rights to both of which are needed in most digital uses of music (see our post here).

At the RAIN Summit North, held at Canadian Music Week on March 12, David’s panel discussed the music royalty structure for Internet Radio companies in Canada. Panelists included the CEO of  Re:Sound (the Canadian version of SoundExchange, collecting royalties for the public performance of sound recordings) and the head of CMRRA-SODRAC (CSI), the Canadian Rights Society that collects for reproductions of musical compositions.  In Canada, broadcasters and Internet radio companies pay not only to SOCAN, the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP, BMI and SESAC in collecting for the public performance of musical compositions, but also to CSI for the reproductions of musical compositions made in servers, buffers and other digital reproductions.