WSJ is reporting the U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing
the decades-old legal system that governs what songwriters and publishers
charge broadcasters, digital-music services and other licensees to play their
compositions.
The rare review, announced this week by the Justice
Department's Antitrust Division, comes as technology shakes up the music
industry, depressing record sales and leaving songwriters increasingly
dependent on the performance royalties they receive from radio and
digital-streaming services such as Pandora Media Inc. and Apple Inc.'s newest acquisition, Beats
Music.
Since a pair of antitrust settlements dating back to 1941,
the federal government has mandated that the country's two biggest
performing-rights organizations—American Society of Composers, Authors and
Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc.—license their members' work to anyone
willing to pay the rates set by federal judges in "rate court," run
through the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Some
companies such as Apple have opted to make direct deals with rights holders
instead.
ASCAP and BMI would prefer that the Justice Department
eradicate the consent decrees altogether, according to people familiar with the
matter, but their proposals in the review process will be less ambitious.
The review comes as Washington lawmakers consider a broader
overhaul of copyright law, including the separate rules that determine what
digital-music services pay record companies and performers to transmit their
recordings.
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