Music Rights Orgs Hoping Trump Backs Copyright Changes

Music industry companies in the content sectors donated nearly $7 million to Hillary Clinton and less than $140,000 to Trump. Vivendi, Sony Music Entertainment and the Warner Music Group – big players in music – donated nearly $750,000 to Hillary and $17,850 to Trump.

According to Brian McNicoll writing at Townhall, they supported Clinton because they want some changes made to copyright law, and they obviously thought she was more favorably disposed to a pay-for-play arrangement.

With regard to music, the two largest music collectives – ASCAP and BMI – control the rights to 90 percent of all compositions. They license songs to bars, restaurants, stores, even elevators and distribute the funds to those who own the rights to the songs.

The government allows these two organizations to control so much of this highly profitable market because it brings order that otherwise would be impossible to obtain. Some compositions are owned by dozens of people, which could make obtaining rights extremely difficult if not impossible.

But businesses are able to license through ASCAP and BMI and avoid infringement suits, and songwriters have entities large enough to enforce their rights.

In return for giving ASCAP and BMI monopoly power, the Department of Justice maintains antitrust consent decrees with the two organizations that restrict monopoly pricing.

Under the consent decrees that govern these businesses – which date to the 1940s – ASCAP and BMI need reach agreement with only one of the co-owners to license a song to a radio station or retail store so long as the fees from the license are properly distributed to all other owners. These are not exclusive agreements – other rights-holders could enter into agreements with other such organizations.

These rights organizations want to impose what’s called fractional licensing, which would require restaurants that seek to play licensed music to come to agreement with every rights holder to a given work. Given the millions of works a restaurant has to license to avoid infringement suits, fractional licensing would lead to dramatically higher prices for music licenses and make it nearly impossible to license the rights to some music.

How will Trump handle this? Nobody knows for sure, writes McNicoll. The consent decrees are legal – they were upheld by a federal court as recently as last summer – and they do work. They’ve brought unprecedented order and growth to an industry with a long history of anticompetitive behavior.