Posted on 07/17/2020 5:54:25 AM PDT by BlackAdderess
The Justice Department is planning a virtual public workshop on one of the most contentious issues in the music business the future of the nearly 80-year-old consent decrees that have governed how works are licensed.
The event on July 28 and 29 is the latest development as the Justice Departments Antitrust Division reviews the decrees, a move that would have huge implications on songwriters, artists and publishers.
According to the DOJ, the workshop will include discussions of competition issues related to public performance licenses, competition between performing rights organizations, and the licensing of music to end users
(Excerpt) Read more at deadline.com ...
BOOM! A shot across the bow!
Rome is literally on fire and THIS is Bill Barr’s priority??
It’s an issue. I guessing you didn’t see his Hollywood/Business/China speech. Check it out you will feel better.
Restoring a freer market and starting to undo the mechanism that rewards anti-competitive practices that are destroying careers and nose-diving an industry will hopefully help create more jobs and help us to stop looking like evil philistines to the rest of the world.
Cause we can’t do more than 1 thing at a time. The music industry is a freaking mess too.
Hopefully this effort won’t result in another 20 years extension to copyright.
Barr probably only knows an investigation was in progress; if that.
It’s not all that clear to me, but who will be the big winners if the consent decrees are eliminated. It seems that the biggest losers, in order, will be:
1. National Association of Broadcasters and Motion Picture Association.
2. National Music Publishers Association.
3. ASCAP
So who would be the big winners and how would it benefit them.
Im not at all sure that the DOJ is locked into eliminating consent decrees at this stage. What would be nice, though, would be to alter the balance of power and give the artists more control of what they produce.
If you take a look at Billboard, there isnt a whole lot of variety going on there. I have seen a number of sources saying that old music is outselling new music (like 70/30) and if services like Spotify are paying a half penny per streamed song, making a living for new and lesser known artists probably comes down to government funded grants perhaps more than should be necessary given that SOMEBODY is making some money on the music. The subscription services far outsold all other formats (including ad supported).
The ASCAP is not going to be a loser in this and in fact they are lobbying for the changes to made, the streaming services are the ones that are against it.
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