According to British press reports, Warner Music’s CEO Edger Bronfman Jr. stated that it will cease making its music available to advertising supported streaming music sites.  This has prompted some questions about how this decision would affect services such as Pandora, Slacker, Accuradio and other Internet radio companies – would it deny them access to substantial amounts of music?  In fact, as these US services operate under a "statutory license", created by Congress, they get access to  all legally recorded music in exchange for the payment of a royalty established by the Copyright Royalty Board.  Essentially, under this statutory license (otherwise known as a "compulsory license"), a copyright holder cannot deny access to companies operating under the license, as long as those companies comply with terms of the license, and pay the established royalty.  Thus, even if the Warner Music decision really is true, this decision should have little or no impact on US Internet Radio stations operating under the compulsory license.

What would it affect?  Presumably it could hurt services that don’t rely on the statutory license.  Internet Radio operators who want to rely on the statutory license must meet a set of requirements set out by statute in order to qualify for the license.  We’ve written about those obligations before here, in connection with the waiver of some of these requirements in the royalty settlement between SoundExchange and the NAB.  Services operating under the license must meet the "statutory complement", meaning that they cannot play more songs from an artist or CD in a given time period than allowed by the law, specifically:

  • No more than 3 songs in a row by the same artist
  • Not more than 4 songs by same artist in a 3 hour period
  • No more than 2 songs from same CD in a row

In addition, Section 114 of the Copyright Act sets out other limitations on a service operating under the statutory license.  The service must provide the name of the artist, song and CD in text on its site, to the extent technically possible, while the song is playing.  There are also certain restrictions about tying the music being played to commercial content on the site, and requiring that sites take steps to prevent digital piracy.  And, most importantly, the service cannot be "interactive."Continue Reading Warner Music Says No More Music for Streaming – What’s It Mean for US Webcasters?

Yesterday, a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. denied the Emergency Motion for a Stay of the Internet Radio Royalty rates set earlier this year by the Copyright Royalty Board.  Our coverage of the stay motion can be found here and here.  Coverage of the entire royalty issue and the surrounding controversy can be found in various posts on our blog, here.  The denial of the stay means that, absent Congressional action or some voluntary agreement of the parties, the new rates will go into effect with payments for the period since the CRB decision being due on Monday, July 16.

The Court’s decision was very brief – in essence three sentences which merely stated that the moving parties had not met the high legal burden necessary for the Court to impose a stay.  A stay is an extraordinary legal action, taken by a Court as part of its equitable powers to insure that justice is carried out.  In order to justify a stay, a party must show the Court that there is a likelihood of success on the merits of the case (in other words, it must prove in a 20 page stay motion the likelihood that it will eventually win its appeal after full briefing and oral argument), plus it must prove that there will be irreparable harm if the stay is not issued (more than simply a loss of money – but harm that cannot be remedied if the appeal is eventually successful).  Weighing those factors, and balancing the competing interests of the parties and the public interest, the Court decides whether or not to issue a Stay.  In this case, as there was no more than the pro forma Order, we do not know what shortcomings the Court perceived in the Motion seeking the Stay, but no reasons are required as the Court can merely decide not to exercise its equitable discretion in a case.Continue Reading Court Denies Webcaster Stay