FCC Denies ASCAP Petition vs. Pandora

The FCC has denied a music industry challenge to its decision to allow Pandora to exceed the 25% cap on foreign ownership of a broadcast station, at least for one radio station in South Dakota, according to multichannelnews.com.

In May, in a declaratory ruling in response to a petition from the online music site,  which wants to buy a radio station, the FCC said: "[W]e find that it would serve the public interest to permit a widely dispersed group of shareholders to hold aggregate foreign ownership in Pandora Media in excess of the 25% benchmark.

The FCC this week voted on an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers June 3, 2015, petition seeking reconsideration of the declaratory ruling. "[N]one of ASCAP’s arguments on the merits warrants reconsideration or review of the Bureau’s order," the commission concluded.

In granting Pandora's request to exceed the limits, the FCC had said that “The alleged harms [harms ASACAP had alleged] to the performing rights system arise from Pandora’s proposed purchase of a radio station, not from the level of Pandora’s foreign ownership."

The FCC voted back in November to clarify that its 25% limit on foreign ownership of broadcast properties is not a hard cap, but a trigger for case-by-case review. At the time it "considered and rejected ASCAP’s suggestion that we leverage our statutory obligations under Section 310(b)(4) [foreign ownership] in an attempt to preserve the current music licensing system."

The declaratory ruling only applied to the "case" of Pandora's ability to buy KXMZ 102.7 FM, in the Rapid City, S.D. market, a point the FCC made in the Pandora ruling.