SiriusXM settles lawsuit on royalties for songs made before ’72

For the past two years, the music industry has been watching a series of lawsuits centered on an obscure aspect of copyright law: whether the performers on older recordings should get royalties when their songs are played on digital radio services.

One of those lawsuits was settled Friday when SiriusXM, the satellite radio provider, announced it would pay $210 million to the major record companies over its broadcasting of songs made before 1972.

...two years ago members of the 1960s band the Turtles, whose hits included “Happy Together” sued Sirius in three federal courts, saying their songs before 1972 were still covered under state laws in New York, California and Florida. The group accused Sirius of broadcasting them without permission, and sought $100 million in damages as part of a class-action suit.

The major labels soon followed with their own case, in California state court. On Friday, Sirius disclosed through a securities filing that on June 17 it had reached an agreement with the labels that would cover its use of old songs through the end of 2017, and would negotiate with labels for new licenses thereafter.

...Last year Sirius had $4.2 billion in revenue, and Wall Street analysts estimate that the company paid about 10 percent of that — approximately $400 million — in music royalties.

...The Turtles’ suit has been certified with class-action status, although the labels’ settlement with Sirius will reduce the size of that class....

Those who own the publishing aren’t necessarily the ones who owned them at the point of creation. It’s a big monopoly and it proves that payola works since half a century later those are still the only songs being played on radio.

As for dictating what someone is going to run, scratch the surface and you’ll find that often it was some connected producer who owned some old song and wanted to bring it back to make more dough-re-mi.

Rock Around The Clock was the b-side of Bill Haley’s single for Decca (he’d already been recording for Essex and Vogue among others). The record guy owned publishing on “13 Women” and wanted his song recorded (as the A-side so he’d get the money from sales). He was so fixated on his own investment that the Comets only had 30 minutes to record Rock Around The Clock. They managed to record 2 takes and they had to be spliced together to get a usable track.

Blueberry Hill, Keep A Knockin’, Are You Lonesome Tonight? All of these were decades old songs by the time they became “rock and roll” hits.

My favorite version of the gospel song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” is by the Old Fashioned Revival Hour Quartet. However, I don’t believe it’s available anywhere online by itself, although it can be found in some of the Old Fashioned Revival Hour worship service broadcast transcripts that are available online.

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