Roger Fingas
Pandora has reached a $90 million settlement with record labels over royalties from pre-1972 recordings, which were under contention because they don't fall under U.S. federal copyright protections.
Several members of the Recording Industry Association of America — Capitol Records, Sony, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and ABKCO Music — had charged instead that Pandora was violating New York state law by publicly performing the recordings, according to Billboard. As precedent for their lawsuit the record labels relied on 2014 rulings in California and New York, which said that pre-1972 works could be protected at the state level.
The exact terms of the settlement are confidential, but a Sony source told Billboard that the label intends to share proceeds with artists in a way similar to SoundExchange, which often handles industry royalties. A Warner spokesperson said the company would use SoundExchange directly, and a separate source claimed the same about Universal.
While fighting the lawsuit, Pandora asked to see artist contracts, arguing that if it were unfair to play recordings without paying every artist, there would be a provision for performance royalties in every recording contract. Label lawyers countered that the only important issue was payment to artists, and noted that ABKCO makes sure all of its artists are paid for digital streaming regardless of individual contracts.
Similar lawsuits are being leveled at terrestial broadcasters such as CBS Radio, iHeartMedia, and Cumulus. Sirius XM reached a $210 million settlement with the RIAA in June.
In January, Zenbu Magazines filed lawsuits against companies like Apple, Google, Rdio, and Sony over the same matter. In Apple's case action was directed against Beats Music, which is in the process of merging into Apple Music.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
13 Comments
Pandora will be gone in a year. Two years at the most.
IINAL and all that but it would seem that they (labels) would have to show that the pre-72 works were streamed in NY and only those ones streamed in NY could be the subject of the suit since it was under NY law?
IINAL and all that but it would seem that they (labels) would have to show that the pre-72 works were streamed in NY and only those ones streamed in NY could be the subject of the suit since it was under NY law?
And California apparently. Probably not a song in question that was not streamed to a user in one of those two states.
What a surprise, New Yuck and Crappifornia were at fault here.
And California apparently. Probably not a song in question that was not streamed to a user in one of those two states.
But ONLY the streams that went to NY (not California unless a separate suit was brought since it was brought under NY law in a NY state court) would be liable. A stream of a song streamed to Florida would not be liable even if the same song was streamed to NY. (As they pay per stream I understand).