Australian Collection Society Upset It Doesn't Get To Collect Extra For Radio Simulcasts Online

from the entitlement-society dept

As various collection societies have been getting more desperate to collect more and more fees, a favorite move is to focus in on sky high internet "streaming" rates. In the US, webcasting rates are many, many times higher than the royalties that radio has to pay. It's why there still remain many questions about whether or not webcasting is a viable business, even for giants like Pandora. It's particularly ridiculous when it comes to radio stations who choose to "simulcast" their stations online. Thankfully, down in Australia, there was a ruling that made some sense, saying that radio stations shouldn't have to pay much higher internet rates just to rebroadcast their radio stream online. But what's really telling is the response from the local collection society, PPCA, who wanted to collect all that money:

"We are disappointed by this ruling on a technical point relating to internet streaming but will continue to work hard for a better deal for artists and labels," comments PPCA CEO Dan Rosen.

"Australia remains out of step with other jurisdictions such as the U.K., Canada and New Zealand where radio operators pay significantly higher license fees."

Perhaps the question should be whether or not it's right that those other jurisdictions make radio stations pay so much more for promoting artists? Given the history of payola, where the record labels have shown -- empirically -- that they get tremendous value out of having their artists played on the air and are willing to pay for it... it seems pretty silly to then demand that the radio stations turn around and pay "higher fees" back.

Filed Under: australia, broadcasting, royalties, webcasting
Companies: ppca

Massively Increasing Music Licensing Fees For Clubs Down Under Massively Backfires

from the finding-non-covered-music dept

We've noted the ridiculous and self-defeating efforts by many music collections societies around the world to jack up their rates by ridiculous amounts. None was more ridiculous than the attempt in Australia by the PPCA where some of the rate changes would rocket up from figures like $125/year... to $19,344/year. Well, it looks like it's already backfiring badly. Reader Dan alerts us to the news that the organization that represents night clubs and similar businesses in Australia, appropriately named Clubs Australia, has set up a system whereby the organization will specifically go out and seek music by artists not covered by the collections effort, and distribute that music to clubs and other establishments. Then, these clubs, gyms, restaurants and the like can tell the PPCA to take a hike, and still play music. We'd already seen that some clubs had started doing this on their own, but now they've teamed up to share such music with each other in order to get out from under the PPCA entirely. So, nice job PPCA. Once again, in your effort to get people to pay more for every single use, you end up making it that much more difficult for anyone to actually hear -- or care about -- the musicians you supposedly represent.

Filed Under: australia, clubs, collection society, licensing, music
Companies: clubs australia, ppca