Extensions of time were just announced in two proceedings affecting music licensing – one a Copyright Office proceeding studying music licensing generally, and another a Copyright Royalty Board proceeding on webcasting recordkeeping.  Only a week after announcing that it would take another round of comments on its music licensing study, the Copyright Office announced an extension of the due dates for those comments – moving the deadline to September 12.  The expressed reason was to allow participants to have more time to complete their comments.  Perhaps, it was also to await the posting of the transcripts of the roundtables held by the office across the country, where various parties had the opportunity to address many of the issues on which the Copyright Office now seeks comments. See our post here about the questions posed by the Copyright Office in this new round of comments, and our article here about the issues originally identified for comment at the start of this proceeding.

The Copyright Royalty Board has also extended the time to file Reply Comments in its recordkeeping proceeding (to be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, here).  That proceeding seeks to determine whether to change the information that webcasters need to report to SoundExchange about the songs that it plays.  The suggestions included the potential for requiring information about ISRC Codes as well as artist, song title and record label in connection with all the songs that are played on an Internet radio station.  We wrote about that proceeding here.  The new deadline for reply comments is September 5.  Get your comments ready for filing in these important proceedings.