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Guest Post: We are Not Blind to the Harsh Economic Realities of Streaming: An Interview with an Indie Publisher
[Following is an interview with a reader who is an independent publisher about how they view the future for songwriters and independent publishers in the streaming upside down world to the right of the decimal place. The publisher requested to remain anonymous.]
Chris Castle/MTP: I want to ask you about challenges in the streaming reality for an independent publisher. So, readers get the context, about how many titles are in your catalog and what responsibilities do you have as a publisher or administrator?
Publisher: Our companies were originally founded in 1958 in Hollywood at Vine and Selma. We control over 2100 recorded known songs collectively – in four main publishing firms – which also includes 35 administrated composer artist’s own publishing firms as well, worldwide. We handle all licensing, collection, royalty accounting, back royalty recoveries and sync licensing, inhouse. This we do for 46 years now.
MTP: One of the threshold problems that I’ve seen with the way royalties are calculated for streaming is that the per-stream rate shifts from period to period which makes it impossible to tell a songwriter—let’s not forget about them—how much they are getting paid. Do you find that’s an issue for publishers or am I making too much of that information gap?
Publisher: That information gap IS holding us down, we have no way to know HOW it’s calculated as it is and those calculations ABSOLUTELY are not making any sense, there is no explanation, continuity or pattern to deciphering the differences for each part of the service’s tiers – and the amount of units reported to support the varied rates, it follows no logic at all. It changes from period to period and often you’ll see 25,000 units on a Spotify Premium plan that PAYS nothing. WHY? We have no rights to audit and are helpless to question this with hundreds of thousands of excel statements that keep making LESS sense.
The rates are always different and incomprehensible!
PANDORA (PREMIUM/ AND PLUS
RATE UNITS TOTAL
0.1667 44755 0.57303
.24368 19756.5 0.24368
ITUNES MATCH AND FAMILY AND ITUNES MATCH
RATE UNITS TOTAL
0.000027 964 0.02
0.000511 1323 0.67
0.00048 2816 1.35
0.00001 1345 0.01
0.000011 4832 0.05
SPOTIFY FREE!? PREMIUM
0.00020 4765 0!
0.000174 1441 0!
[NOTE: The Music Modernization Act creates an optional audit right for the MLC to audit service once every three years. Remember this is an optional right created in the Mechanical Licensing Collective–not songwriters–to audit services operating under the blanket license (unclear when that three year period starts running, but probably 1/1/21, so the first audit can start after 1/1/24). Unclear how songwriters can require MLC to audit services, or if the MLC’s audit right applies to periods before 1/1/21. MLC is also allowed to use an “alternative verification process” which doesn’t preclude a settlement without an audit. MMA is unclear on how audit recovery is shared.]
MTP: Along that same line, Apple proposed a penny rate of $0.00091 in the last Copyright Royalty Board rate setting (aka Phonorecords III, which is currently being appealed for other reasons by Spotify, Google and Pandora). Do you think that a fixed penny rate would be easier or more difficult to calculate? Apple’s proposal was rejected. Was Apple’s rate more or less than you collect now?
Publisher: Of course, accounting with a penny rate would be easier than these fractional mini pennies. YES, it seems as though GETTING at least a penny rate per stream, would be SOMETHING at least, better than all the units practically accounted AS free goods! The rate rise promised in the MMA is still on the horizon, yet that certain MMA Copyright Act granted yearly increase HAS NOT arrived yet, not until 2021 AND because the still HOSTILE-to-Creators and GREEDY Streaming Companies – are Appealing it now.
MTP: Under the current regime, how difficult is it to calculate songwriter payments for streaming?
Publisher: It’s real hell, you do your best to get it, account it and pay it out but honestly, it’s not making any financial sense. The logistics over the last 6 years on its delivery by excel downloads is absolute insanity. You can do five hours of just taking it off of each excel Song line – 0ver to the Individual Writer statement, and after the hours of cutting it – you find the grand total of the WHOLE STREAMING check with 21,000 rows turns out to be $10.00! The accounting is so time consuming, and with its tiny micro pennies, too often is beyond heartbreaking seeing the endless devaluation of thousands of copies of your famous songs for so little.
MTP: Would you say that on a per-songwriter basis it costs you more to administer songwriter payments than you make? How about on a per-stream basis?
Publisher: THERE is NO question whatsoever EXACTLY how much the cost of Administration has exceeded the EARNED revenue since Napster and file sharing became legalized as Streaming. We have been under siege with OUR COSTS and our Administrative workload heavier and harder – but digital LOSSES are still growing each month.
If you ACTUALLY compared it to the example of the mechanical days of CD Song units sold at 9.1 cents – (pre-streaming) the resultant digital sea change to streaming NOT CD sales – has actually cost us over $126,000 in losses of normal record income in 6 years. My accountant thinks its just crazy. In order to survive the expense of administrating and office overhead and more- we were driven absolutely to the wall at the end of December 2018 and forced to personally leverage (my own private shares of some very famous songs controlled by a big company). Yeah, a ten-year loan against this income that was supposed to be part of my retirement.
The venture capital investors are buying up Catalog like vultures preying on the Indies who have been hurt. It’s a part of the history of Songs and it’s a travesty. But this is what Streaming rates have done to the business of Music Publishing/Administration UNTIL those rates are raised to an equitable and fair market value number. We have had to work DOUBLETIME in doing film/tv sync licenses at a fast pace just to help supplement our streaming income. It’s terrible that we have to do all this while the Corporations use our Creations and profit, while we collectively suffer. I’ve had to spend my own savings to advance to Writers and Clients in hardship during these times because THEY come first.
MTP: Spotify’s failure to match is a key issue in the recent lawsuit by Eminem’s publishers. How has the matching been for you since Title I of the MMA went into effect?
Publisher: IT’S A friggin nightmare, I don’t have the personal time to DO all of this MATCHING and reclaiming our titles THAT THEY failed to even LOOK for. IT’S SO UNFAIR to put this on us the Victims of their infringing our works. YET we have no choice now BUT to GET THEM FOUND, FILED and claimed under The Spotify settlement, and The Rhapsody settlement too, and HELP get those PENNIES back for our Writers and Publisher clients.
MTP: If you could change anything about the current system what would it be?
Publisher: The three major labels who first invested in this scheme and enabled themselves to ELIMINATE the manufacturing costs, and put all the Masters in the vaults – and devalued the price of songs with these terrible streaming rates really represents THE Corporate take over of the Song Business as we knew it. The only thing other than setting us free from this slavery and unfair business competition and constant bleeding loss of royalty value – IS – WE want a fair market streaming rate that will help restore our Writers and Clients to some kind of sustainability in order for them to be able to pay their bills and survive these terrible years of attack on their livelihood and income. Nothing less. Will the MMA law now bring us to that remedy and healing, I surely pray it does?
MTP: Is there anything you’d like to add?
Publisher: I hope this article reaches every creative person who’s suffering privately and silently and helps to show them they are not alone, and we are not blind. That is my desire. Hugs and thank you for making it possible. Even anonymously I give this..this truth, as solace to all of us trying to make sense of it all.
@musictechpolicy Podcast: Eight Mile Style Sues Spotify Under Music Modernization Act
Chris Castle discussion of Eight Mile Style lawsuit against Spotify under Music Modernization Act (driving with dogs series)
Postdicting the Future: Five Things Congress Could Do for Music Creators That Wouldn’t Cost the Taxpayer a Dime from The Hill
[This is a July 30, 2013 summary from The Hill of my series that first appeared in the Huffington Post on July 26, 2013–let’s see how I did after the Music Modernization Act.]
1. Create an Audit Right for Songwriters for Compulsory Licenses: One of the oldest compulsory licenses in the Copyright Act is the “mechanical license”, the statutory mandate forcing songwriters to license songs that dates from 1909. The government mandates the license and also mandates the rate that songwriters are paid—from 1909 until 1977 that rate was set at 2¢ per recording. Although that rate was eventually indexed to inflation leading to the current 9.1¢ minimum, songwriters had to dig out of a deep hole.
Getting paid is another story. This statutory license requires songwriters be sent “statements of account” for royalties—but songwriters are not allowed to conduct a “royalty compliance” examination (called an “audit”). The law requires a company officer and a CPA to certify the company’s statements—a practice rarely complied with. As recently demonstrated by Aimee Mann’s lawsuit against Medianet, if songwriters don’t get paid there’s not much they can do except sue—a costly process.
The government tells the songwriter “trust—but don’t verify.” This is an easy fix. Congress could give songwriters an audit right as they did for stakeholders in the contemporary digital performance compulsory license for satellite radio and Internet radio.
2. Allow Artists and Songwriters to Opt Out of the Compulsory License: The recent blow-up regarding the so-called “Internet Radio Fairness Act” and the related ASCAP and BMI rate court proceedings should let the Congress know that there are many artists and songwriters who want to be able to decide who gets to license their songs. Again, the digital performance compulsory license allows copyright owners to control “interactive” uses of their works—why not at least do the same for the mechanical license as well?
3. Require Digital Royalties for pre-72 Sound Recordings: Sound recordings did not receive federal copyright protection until 1972. When the Congress established the digital performance royalty, it seemed to clearly apply to all recordings and did not arbitrarily exclude recordings prior to 1972. However, this “gotcha” is used by SiriusXM and others to avoid paying great American artists whose records were released before 1972—jazz, R&B and rock legends get nothing. Congress could fix this “gotcha” and secure a fair share of digital performance royalties to these authors of our musical heritage.
4. Require All Unpaid Statutory Mechanical Royalties Be Paid to the State Unclaimed Property Offices: As Aimee Mann’s alleged in her lawsuit against the white label provider Medianet, witnesses stated that 23 percent of the songs used by Medianet are unlicensed—which could easily be millions of songs if true. And there are likely a number of digital music services that are arbitrarily holding unpaid royalties in an unauthorized “escrow.”
It seems that there could be substantial royalties controlled by the very retailers who must pay songwriters under the law, a potentially significant moral hazard. Congress could require that any “escrowed” royalties be paid over under State unclaimed property laws—a lawful “escrow.”
5. Require that Online and Offline Videos Follow the Same Rules: As online video platforms become available through Internet enabled home televisions, attention should be paid to a frequently overlooked category of songwriter—the film and television music composers. Current reporting by online video platforms makes it difficult for score composers to be paid for their work. The Congress may well ask whether those who seek to replace television should be held to the same licensing standards as television.
These are but a few ideas the Congress could be addressing that might make a difference in the lives of artists and songwriters and would cost the taxpayer very little. All leverage existing structures and bureaucracies, eliminate “gotchas,” and help to reduce the unintended consequences of government mandated compulsory licensing.
Postdicting the Future: Five Things Congress Could Do for Music Creators That Wouldn’t Cost the Taxpayer a Dime Part 4: Fixing Unmatched Songwriter Royalties
[In 2013, I wrote 5 articles on Huffington Post titled “5 Things Congress Could Do That Wouldn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime”. The series foreshadowed policies that were addressed in the Music Modernization Act five years later. This is a repost of Part 4 of that series. After the MMA, how did I do?]
The US is alone in the world in maintaining a compulsory license for songs. The government forces songwriters to license their songs at a rate approved by the government and then has rather flimsy rules about how songwriters actually get paid. These flimsy rules, I suggest, have resulted in unknown amounts of royalties not finding their way to songwriters, particularly under compulsory licenses used by on-demand digital music services.
There’s an easy fix for this — the same rule that was applied against record companies and music publishers for unclaimed royalties in the past: Pay the money to state unclaimed property offices. If songwriters are getting ripped off by brand sponsored piracy on the unlicensed sites, then let’s at least make sure they get paid on the licensed services.
The Compulsory License for Songs
When the Congress established the compulsory license in 1909, the legislative body was concerned that granting exclusive rights in “mechanical royalties” for songs in piano rolls might create a monopoly if a single publisher could buy up the market in songs. However real that concern might have been at the time, the most common complaint from digital music services about songs is that the music publishing market is too fragmented, so it seems that argument is no longer relevant.
One of the big users of compulsory licenses is, of course, Google Play. Concern about the antitrust lusting of songwriters is particularly difficult to comprehend in a world in which the same government allows Google to buy and subsidize YouTube with monopoly rents, buy Double Click to achieve a dominant position in online advertising, and is given a pass by the FTC for antitrust violations. But those songwriters…boy, we have to keep a close eye on them.
Unsupervised Digital Music Services
So what appears to be happening is this: Digital music services use the compulsory license and its labyrinthine regulations — often with notices that are too late, accountings that are noncompliant and data that is just incorrect. To give you a sense of scope, digital music services often offer 20 million or so recordings, all of which contain the co-equal copyright in the song being recorded. Songs and recordings of songs have to be separately licensed for on-demand streaming services (especially the popular “cover recordings”). Songs are frequently co-owned — so the service using the compulsory license must notify a minimum of 20 million songwriters of their use of the song and often two or more writers per song. So let’s just call it tens of millions of licenses.
The digital music services must then track the use of these songs and recordings and match the usage to licenses obtained. There inevitably will be songs for which the writers cannot be found. So even if you assume that these companies can get to the matching stage without making any mistakes at all, what happens when there is usage — and therefore payable royalties — for songs that the service is unable to match — even for the most honest of reasons.
How Digital Music Services Pay Themselves Free Money
Add to this problem another problem — digital music services frequently try to dupe songwriters — the ones they have found — into agreeing that the service need only account to them if the songwriter has over a certain amount in payable royalties — somewhere between $50 and $250 depending on the service. (Google Play, for example, has a $100 minimum threshold — unilaterally imposed — on all international and “friction free” electronic payments.)
To put some math on this, realize that there are about 20 million songs typically available in a broad based retail offering such as Google Play or Spotify. Assume that on average 50 percent achieve $25 in earnings in a given calendar quarter accounting period. (This is consistent with both the “long tail” power law type sales distribution and the miniscule royalties paid to songwriters by these services.)
If a service holds royalty payments from songwriters until payable royalties exceed $25 (such as Google Play’s $100 default threshold as stated in their “Publisher Statement of Account Preference”), this means that the service could then be sitting on up to $250,000,000 in interest-free money. Free money that they theoretically may never have to pay out and only have to pay out when the service determines that the songwriter’s account is payable. Free money that is not permitted under the compulsory license rules for songs.
And that’s one service.
This policy of withholding royalties is fraught with moral hazard and practical problems: The heirs of one songwriter recently tried to sort out these payments and were told they needed to hire a lawyer to deal with the highly litigious digital music service. They couldn’t afford a lawyer so guess what happens to the unclaimed monies? And then there’s the statute of limitations.
Unmatched and Unclaimed Royalties
But there’s another problem with the digital music services — if they service cannot match usage (and earnings) to a royalty recipient in their systems, what happens then? Particularly with monies based on a share of advertising revenue that is distributed proportionately based on usage?
In this example, if in one month all songs were played 100 times and your song was played 10 times, then you would get 10/100 (or 10 percentt) of the advertising pie for that period. But — if there were actually 120 songs played during that period but only 100 could be matched, what happens to the other 20 that were unmatched? There is a growing belief that what happens is that the services don’t count the 20 unmatched songs, and divide the pie up based on the 100 they are able to match.
That means — there are 20 songs that were exploited but that are never paid and are not on the books. Even though there should be no songs on the service that were unlicensed because the compulsory license applies. If this seems high, remember that MediaNet’s lawyers acknowledged in a declaration cited in the current case by Aimee Mann against MediaNet that 23 percent of the millions of songs on the service are unlicensed.
By not counting the unmatched (and probably also unlicensed) songs, a service could argue — albeit fallaciously — that it had no “unallocated” royalties as it allocated all payable royalties to songs it could match and did not accrue any unpaid royalties. If I’m right about this, services are overpaying the matched songs with a share of revenue from the unmatched songs (in our example, 10/120 or 8-1/3 percent instead of the overpayment of 10/100 or 10 percent).
Because the Congress does not allow songwriters to audit the digital music services, there is no real way to know whether this is happening or the degree to which it is happening. If 23 percent of the MediaNet songs are unlicensed, royalties payable on any activity on these songs seems like it should at least be accrued until the songwriters can be found.
This is, of course, why states have unclaimed property statutes. In 2004, then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer chased record companies and music publishers for unpaid royalties for artists who could not be found for a variety of reasons, some plausible, some not so plausible. Spitzer forced the royalties to be paid—like utility deposits, dividends, abandoned bank accounts, the works—to the state unclaimed property office where the monies are held forever and where somebody eventually tries to track down the rightful owner.
Of course — there is a chance that if the digital music services did this voluntarily they might be admitting that they were using unlicensed songs and they want to keep a good eye on those kinds of admissions. So they will come up with many excuses for why they should not be subject to the same laws as everyone else. It is, after all, the Internet, and you know how that can be.
An Easy Fix for Congress: Pay unclaimed money to people who deal with unclaimed money
Even if the Congress does not establish an audit right for songwriters for mechanical royalties as they have for rights holders under the more contemporary webcasting compulsory license and the Audio Home Recording Act, it would be quite simple for the Congress to clarify once and for all that unpaid royalties — whether for the unmet minimum thresholds unilaterally imposed by digital music services, unknown addresses for songwriters, or any other reason — should be paid to the state unclaimed property offices in the state of the songwriter’s last known address or at least the state where the company does business.
Companies that want to take advantage of the compulsory license rules for songs shouldn’t also get to make their own rules to take advantage of songwriters.
Postdicting the Present: Five Things Congress Could Do for Music Creators That Wouldn’t Cost the Taxpayer a Dime Part 3: Create an Audit Right for Songwriters
In 2013, I wrote 5 articles on Huffington Post titled “5 Things Congress Could Do That Wouldn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime”. After the MMA, how did I do?
Copyright Office Issues Interim Rule for MLC Applications Including Oversight of MLC Board by Librarian of Congress
The U.S. Copyright Office issued an interim rule for comment that lays out an intricate and well thought out approach to the Register’s role in designating the Mechanical Licensing Collective and the Digital Licensee Coordinator under Title I of the Music Modernization Act.
Consistent with the MLC’s role as a quasi-governmental organization (or quasi-private, depending on how you look at it), the interim rule confirms that “directors of the MLC are inferior officers under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution [,] that the Librarian of Congress must approve each subsequent selection of a new director….[and] that the Register work with the MLC, once it has been designated to ensure that the Librarian retains the ultimate authority to appoint and remove all directors.” Presumably, state corporate laws governing the formation of the MLC will give way to this requirement.
The Librarian’s ability to can directors should help assuage some of the concerns about the powers of the MLC and is, of course, entirely consistent with the powers of the MLC as a quasi-governmental organization.
Another requirement that caught my eye relates to the “Hoffa Clause” that allows the MLC to invade the black box to pay operating expenses not covered by the services in the administrative assessment. The Copyright Office seems quite aware of the moral hazard present, and asks the prospective MLC candidates to provide:
Information regarding whether and how the proposed MLC may apply unclaimed accrued royalties on an interim basis to defray operating costs, as well as any accompanying plans for future reimbursement of such royalties from future collections of the administrative assessment, including relevant legal considerations and guidelines in the event the proposed MLC does intend to apply unclaimed accrued royalties.
All in all, the Copyright Office should be commended for putting together a comprehensive and even-handed “job description” for the MLC and the DLC in keeping with the Office’s statutory role in getting this quasi-governmental organization up and running.
Weekly Key Dates and Accomplishments for the Mechanical Licensing Collective Under the Music Modernization Act (11/30) by Artist Rights Watch (The “Countdown to Modernity”)
As best we can tell from the outside looking in, this chart has the dates for key events in the critical path to launch for the Mechanical Licensing Collective as required by the Music Modernization Act. We have called the chart the “Countdown to Modernity.” Obviously, this chart is not intended as legal advice, and you should consult your own attorney about any of these dates or events. Note: After 1/9/19, this chart, updates and analysis will be available to premium subscribers of MusicTechPolicy.
Recall that the Register of Copyrights gets to pick the entity to operate as the Mechanical Licensing Collective. The Tennessean reported that the first fully-formed candidate to emerge is the American Music Licensing Collective or the “AMLC”. (AMLC’s website is songrights.net.) Within days, Digital Music News also reported that two AMLC board members have left the organization for reasons that their source says were “directly tied to threats”. Digital Music News continues to report on these alleged “threats.”
The appearance of multiple candidates for the yet to be designated MLC raises another question–what about any existing black box? MTP and ARW readers will recall that the MLC is allowed to invade the black box to cover certain administrative costs that exceed the “administrative assessment” to be paid by the blanket licensees:
INTERIM APPLICATION OF ACCRUED ROYALTIES.—In the event that the administrative assessment, together with any funding from voluntary contributions…is inadequate to cover current collective total costs, the collective, with approval of its board of directors, may apply unclaimed accrued royalties on an interim basis to defray such costs, subject to future reimbursement of such royalties from future collections of the assessment.
Digital Music News also focuses on this issue:
According to the MMA’s language, mechanical licenses [presumably meaning royalties] that remain unclaimed after just one year will be largely mopped up by major publishers according to marketshare, an arrangement that has drawn protest. The value of the initial unclaimed tranche of funds has been estimated to be as high as $1.5 billion, at least according to a report by Variety.
We’re not big believers in this $1.5 billion number and it’s not exactly right that Variety reported that number–the Variety story has changed several times and is still a bit murky. Due to a later update to the article concerned it’s a bit unclear exactly what Variety meant in the original unsourced reporting. The original story as reported in Artist Rights Watch stated the industry-wide black box was $1.5 billion:
The DSPs are holding some $1.5 billion in unmatched mechanical royalties. If the MMA passes, that money would be passed through to the MLC which would match it to the songwriters and publishers.
Variety subsequently changed that language in the story at least twice that we know of, but never actually retracted the $1.5 billion number as far as we can tell, although they may have depending on your point of view of what constitutes a “retraction”. In any event, the story now reads:
The DSPs are holding millions in unmatched mechanical royalties — the sum of all Notice of Intent (NOI) filings currently parked at the U.S. Copyright office, while unknown, is climbing. If the MMA passes, that money would be passed through to the MLC which would match it to the songwriters and publishers.
Note–there’s still no source for either the “$1.5 billion” or the “millions” or for the “update”. Remember that in the MMA Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Feinstein said that the black box could be hundreds of millions.
Remember that the “initial administrative assessment shall be effective as of the license availability date” which is 1/1/21. It is not clear whether the initial administrative assessment will cover the MLC’s prospective costs, its startup costs, or both. One fair interpretation of the MMA is that the initial assessment shall be prospective and shall not cover startup costs, although the parties can, of course, agree to pay more than they are obligated to incur by statute. It is unclear if those additional costs would be passed down to all blanket licensees (who may object to paying more than the statute requires). You would think that this important issue would be clearly stated in the statute, but it is not.
The following chart is a work in progress, and if anyone sees anything wrong in it or something that should be clarified or corrected, please let us know. It should be considered a draft, but we hope that it will solidify over the next few weeks. We expect activity to pick up once the MLC filing deadline arrives.
Due to the formation of the AMLC, there are now two candidates for the MLC, there may be more coming. The COUNTDOWN TO MODERNITY chart needs to distinguish AMLC from the competing NMPA/NSAI MLC which does not have a name as far as we know. Until the NMPA/NSAI collective adopts a name, we will refer to it as the NMPA/NSAI collective.
The main takeaway from this chart should be the clock is ticking and time is going by. Our prediction? Time will become the MLC’s biggest enemy, if there isn’t already a time bomb in the drafting of the Music Modernization Act. What we don’t see in the MMA is any discussion of what happens if a deadline is blown for whatever reason.
But mark your calendars–we see the first key date as January 9, 2019 when the Copyright Office will request filings from MLC candidates, which so far include the AMLC and the collective to be formed by NMPA/NSAI. That’s 38 days from now and holidays count. The countdown to the License Availability Date: 761 days from now.
ARTIST RIGHTS WATCH
COUNTDOWN TO MECHANICAL LICENSING COLLECTIVE LAUNCH
WEEK 7
KEY DATES SCHEDULE FROM ENACTMENT DATE (10/11/18)
TO LICENSE AVAILABILITY DATE (1/1/21)
| EVENT | ACCOMPLISH | WHO OWNS? | TIME EXPIRED BEFORE LAD | TIME REMAINS TO LAD |
| REQUEST FILING TO BE MLC | STATUS UNKNOWN—Deadline 1/9/2019 | COPYRIGHT OFFICE | 90 DAYS AFTER ENACTMENT | 723 DAYS FROM DEADLINE |
| DESIGNATION OF MLC | STATUS UNKNOWN—Deadline 7/8/2019 | COPYRIGHT OFFICE | 270 DAYS AFTER ENACTMENT | 543 DAYS FROM DEADLINE |
| FORMATION OF MLC NONPROFIT | AMLC nonprofit formed
NMPA/NSAI STATUS UNKNOWN |
MLC | STATUS UNKNOWN | 543 DAYS FROM LAD |
| SUBSTITUTION OF BLANKET LICENSE FOR ALL VALID EXISTING COMPULSORY LICENSES | AUTOMATIC 10/11/2018
|
COPYRIGHT OFFICE | 761 days | |
| MLC BUDGET | STATUS UNKNOWN
(Assume deadline of 1/9/19) |
MLC/DLC/CRJ | 45 days | 770 days |
| INITIATE ASSESSMENT PROCEEDING w/CRJs | [MUST COMMENCE NO LATER THAN 7/8/2019]
STATUS UNKNOWN |
MLC/DLC/CRJ | 219 days | 545 days |
| ASSESSMENT RULING | [PUBLISHED IN FR NO LATER THAN 7/8/2020] | MLC/DLC/ CRJs |
585 days | 179 days |
| APPEAL OF ASSESSMENT RULING | 30 DAYS AFTER PUBLICATION OF ASSESSMENT RULING | MLC/DLC/ CRJ/ DCCOA |
616 days | 149 days |
| MLC BUSINESS PLAN | STATUS UNKNOWN
(Assume deadline of 1/9/19) |
MLC/CO | 39 DAYS | 723 days |
| ANNOUNCED BOARD NOMINEES | AMLC board announced (see DMN and above)
NMPA/NSAI called for nominations. The deadline for NMPA nominations passed on November 15 see NMPA. NSAI are accepting nominations for songwriter board member seats with a December 15 deadline. (these are nonstatutory deadlines) Songwriter board selection by Steve Bogard (NSAI), Rick Carnes (SGA), Lynn Gillespie Chater (SGA), Dallas Davidson (BMI), Chris DeStefano (NSAI), Bob DiPiero (BMI), Dan Foliart (ASCAP), Adam Gorgoni (SONA), Michele Lewis (SONA), Paul Williams (ASCAP) (Assume final deadline of 1/8/19) |
MLC | 39 DAYS | 723 days |
| APPOINTED BOARD | AMLC Board Announced (DMN reports Howard and Mestel depart):
John Barker (founder, president & CEO of ClearBox Rights, LLC). Brownlee Ferguson (founder, Bluewater Music).
Lisa Klein Moberly (founder and president of Optic Noise). Benji Rogers (singer-songwriter, founder of PledgeMusic and co-founder of dotBlockchain Media) Jeff Price (founder of Audiam and co-founder of TuneCore) Henry Gradstein (music industry attorney at Gradstein & Marzano, P.C.)
Ricardo Ordoñez (founder and president of Union Music Group) NMPA/NSAI: STATUS UNKNOWN (Assume deadline of 1/9/19) |
MLC/CO | 39 DAYS | 723 days |
| APPOINTED DLC | STATUS UNKNOWN—Deadline 7/8/2019 | COPYRIGHT OFFICE | 270 days AFTER ENACTMENT | 545 days |
| ENGAGED MLC VENDORS | AMLC: Clearbox Rights, Audiam (others?)
NMPA/NSAI: STATUS UNKNOWN (Assume deadline of 1/9/19) |
MLC | 39 DAYS | 723 days |
| PAID MLC VENDORS | AMLC: See board members above
NMPA/NSAI: STATUS UNKNOWN (ASSUME 7/8/2020 IF NO APPEAL OF ASSESSMENT) |
MLC | 270 days | 545 days |
| ANNOUNCE MLC DATA STANDARDS | STATUS UNKNOWN | MLC/DLC | ||
| REGULATIONS* | STATUS UNKNOWN | COPYRIGHT OFFICE | ||
| COMMENTS AND REPLY COMMENTS ON REGULATIONS | STATUS UNKNOWN | ALL | ||
| EXPLANATION OF OPERATIONS: HOW TO REGISTER WITH MLC AND COST OF REGISTRATION | STATUS UNKNOWN
(Assume deadline of 1/9/19) |
MLC/CO | 39 DAYS | 726 days |
| REGISTRATION START DATE | STATUS UNKNOWN |
MLC=Mechanical Licensing Collective
DLC=Digital Licensee Coordinator
CRJ=Copyright Royalty Judges
DCCOA=District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals
CO=Copyright Office
LAD=License Availability Date
*Topic areas to be updated as announced
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