After a lengthy appeal from a handful of digital powerhouses, the Copyright Royalty Board upheld a nearly 44% bump in streaming royalties for songwriters. The ruling increases streaming rates from 10.5% to 15.1% for a four-year period stretching 2018 to 2022, according to trade groups the National Music Publishers' Association and Nashville Songwriters Association International.
The board initially ruled in favor of an increase in 2018, but leading music streaming companies Spotify, Amazon Music, Google-YouTube and Pandora pushed back against the decision via the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2019. Apple Music did not appeal the ruling.
"Today the court reaffirmed the headline rate increase we earned four long years ago, confirming that songwriters need and deserve a significant raise from the digital streaming services who profit from their work," National Music Publishers' Association president and CEO David Israelite said in a statement.
He added: “This process was protracted and expensive and though we are relieved with the outcome, years of litigation to uphold a rate increase we spent years fighting for is a broken system. Now, songwriters and music publishers finally can be made whole and receive the rightful royalty rates from streaming services that they should've been paid years ago."
Still, it may be months before songwriters see retroactive royalty checks cut from streaming services.
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