EMI Dumps ASCAP For Digital Licensing

from the ouch dept

Wed, May 4th 2011 6:49am — Mike Masnick

Well, this is interesting. When Guy Hands had bought EMI years back, there was hope that, as an outsider, he might come in and shake things up in a good way. That didn't happen, and after a massive flop, Hands lost EMI to Citigroup earlier this year. And, yet, now it appears that EMI is finally making some interesting moves. First up: it's pulling back its digital rights from ASCAP and is going to license them directly. That's a huge hit to ASCAP (who will undoubtedly downplay the significance, though it really is huge). This also should ease the licensing of EMI's catalog, since it's all going through a single company, rather than having to involve multiple companies. I wouldn't be surprised to see others go in this direction as well. Of course, some musicians might not like it, as ASCAP tends to be a bit clearer in its royalty statements than many of the labels, but this is a big potential issue for ASCAP.

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Filed Under: digital, licensing, music, publishing, rights
Companies: ascap, emi

21 Comments

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The eejit (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 6:17am

I, for one, welcome our new old record label overlords.
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DannyB (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 7:21am

Anything that is a major lose for ASCAP
is a huge win for everyone else.
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Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 7:36am

Hooray!
Now the Girl Scouts will be able to sing and dance again!
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 7:43am

Wow, that's like, what, one third of the ASCAP "clients"?
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- The eejit (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 7:52am
  
  Re:
  Closer to 28%, but still, that's a considerable loss.
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Rich Fiscus (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 8:16am

Citigroup taking control of EMI may be the best thing that could have happened to the recorded music industry. The longer it takes to sell them, the better it's likely to be.

Citigroup's only interest in the company is the bottom line. High handed rhetoric about the evil pirates and feel good proclamations about the label's supposed moral high ground aren't going to impress them. As the old saying goes, money talks and bullshit walks.

If they manage to sell EMI relatively soon all this could go away since the only likely buyers are other labels or people blinded by a delusion of being a 20th century label mogul. If that doesn't happen, we could be looking back in 5 years and saying Citigroup's takeover was what forced all the label executives to get off their soapboxes and make some damn money.
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- ComputerAddict (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 9:23am
  
  Re:
  Other Labels are not the only buyers... what about Google?
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  - Rich Fiscus (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 9:58am
    
    Re: Re:
    Rumors aside, I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe they're seriously considering it.
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  - Richard (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 3:56pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Other Labels are not the only buyers... what about Google?
    
    Or indeed any other large company that simply wants to make money. My favourite would be an oil company - those guys are really ruthless with loss making bullshit. I remember where I used to work we mainly did defence contracts - lots of politicing and point scoring - but we also did some for the oil industry - completely different deal. One of their guys once tried to put us down - and make himself look good in front of his bosses - big mistake - they fired him on the spot!
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    - Richard (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 4:03pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      PS - the money that BP lost in the gulf (which doesn't seem to have hurt them too badly) - would have bought all the major labels...
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    - Rich Fiscus (profile), 5 May 2011 @ 3:31am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Why would a company that wants to make money buy EMI? They've been losing hundreds of millions of dollars for the last several years.
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Ben Robinson (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 8:28am

More complex licensing
Presumably this relates to EMI music publishing rather than EMI the record label as ASCAP licenses copyrights for the composition rather than the sound recording.

Anyhoo this is not really a win for people wanting to license music (unless it results in much licensing cheaper costs from EMI) because it has just added an extra party to negotiate a deal with. Existing licensees who have a license with ascap, now nead to renegotiate with EMI in order to carry on using EMI owned compositions. New licensees now have an extra party to negotiate with.

For all their many many bad points collections societies like ASCAP do at least make licensing more simple by reducing the number of parties you have to negotiate with. Under current copyright laws, without them trying to do anything at all with other peoples copyrighted musical compositions would be almost impossible.
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- Anonymous Coward, 4 May 2011 @ 8:39am
  
  Re: More complex licensing
  Good post, thanks.
  
  This is a technerd site, and these buffoons don't really understand the music business...
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  - fogbugzd (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 8:56am
    
    Re: Re: More complex licensing
    >>these buffoons don't really understand the music business.
    
    Oddly, the exact same statement seems to apply to the top execs in most RIAA companies.
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    - Hephaestus (profile), 9 May 2011 @ 7:35am
      
      Re: Re: Re: More complex licensing
      ">>these buffoons don't really understand the music business.
      
      Oddly, the exact same statement seems to apply to the top execs in most RIAA companies."
      
      They understand monopoly rights , they do not understand business ...
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  - Rich, 4 May 2011 @ 9:13am
    
    Re: Re: More complex licensing
    And just how does being McDonald's fry-guy help YOU to understand the music business?
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    - ComputerAddict (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 9:28am
      
      Re: Re: Re: More complex licensing
      Because, he listens to the radio at work, and his boss told him that if he wanted to continue listening to the radio in a public place that he needed to get a performance license. This set him off on a quest trying to license every song from every performer who might possibly get some radio play from that station and thus his life experience as a fry-guy has given him detailed intimate knowledge of music licensing.
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- The eejit (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 10:06am
  
  Re: More complex licensing
  The biggest issue I have with groups such as ASCAP, is that their sole purpose is to act as though they are the lynchpins of the world.
  
  What I would like to see is an actual mediator, rather than someone who wails the Siren Song of Musicality.
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- harbingerofdoom (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 10:07am
  
  Re: More complex licensing
  so what?
  so you remove one of the gatekeeper functions intent on keeping things operating as if they were in a pre-digital age and move those functions back to being a function of EMI itself which may or may not share that ideal (at this point there is really no way to tell).
  
  you still have to talk to *someone* about licensing issues and no, ascap does not actually let you bring in a laundry list and say you have 200 songs you want to license. you still have to go over them item by item at some point so in reality it doesnt matter much that you have to go to another party for EMI songs at this point.
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- Richard (profile), 4 May 2011 @ 4:05pm
  
  Re: More complex licensing
  collections societies like ASCAP do at least make licensing more simple by reducing the number of parties you have to negotiate with.
  Only true if you only operate in one country - if you operate across (say) 30 countries it is obviously easier to deal with one publisher than with all those different collection societies for just one song...
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Gary in San Mateo, 4 May 2011 @ 10:28am

I'm at home and am gonna go full volume on about twenty five songs.
If anybody would like to listen please stop on by. No charge.
Corner of Day and Norfolk San Mateo California.
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