New music royalties on the way. Old royalties turn up their noses and mumble something about being bourgeois.
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New music royalties on the way. Old royalties turn up their noses and mumble something about being bourgeois.
One of the stickiest wickets since Napster began dishing up mp3s has been how record labels and musicians get paid for digital song plays. Yesterday a group of labels, music publishers and online music providers announced a new set of agreements for how royalties would be doled out.
Right now, royalties are calculated on physical sales, digital downloads from places like iTunes, and streaming services like Rhapsody. The new agreement, which still needs to get approval from the government, would expand the categories. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The proposal would create guidelines for five new types of services, including online “locker” services such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes Match and Amazon.com Inc.’s Cloud Drive.
Some of the new rates address music bundled with other goods, such as Internet-service plans, cellphones and vinyl records, which are sometimes sold with codes that allow downloading of MP3 versions of the music.
Folks on the music industry side of this hope the new rates will open up opportunities for new types of music services to spring up. For us, the music-buying public, this could mean easier access to more music. And to that I say: rock-on Chaka Khan.
I’ve just heard back from Ms. Khan about that last sentence, and I’m being told that she (a) agrees to the continuation of rocking and (b) feels for me (and all bad rhyming jokes).
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