Music Rights Research Articles

LAW, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND THE KARAOKE BUSINESS

Intellectual property law, particularly copyright law, is a significant challenge for karaoke businesses. The necessity of obtaining proper music licenses is well-understood, but the complexities and costs involved often lead to gaps in compliance. Local regulations, including zoning laws, noise ordinances, and alcohol licensing, further complicate the legal landscape for karaoke operators. Non-compliance with these laws can result in severe penalties, including fines, legal disputes, and potential business closures. Social media has emerged as an essential tool for marketing and customer engagement in the karaoke industry. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok enable businesses to reach a broader audience and create interactive experiences that enhance customer loyalty. However, the use of copyrighted music in social media posts poses significant legal risks. While social media offers opportunities for growth, businesses must navigate these platforms carefully to avoid copyright infringement and other legal challenges. Managing online reputations is critical in the age of social media, where negative reviews or viral posts can significantly impact a business's image. Proactive strategies for handling customer feedback and maintaining a positive online presence are essential for mitigating reputational risks. The regulatory environment for karaoke businesses is evolving, with stricter enforcement of copyright laws and changing social media policies. Businesses must stay informed and adapt to these changes to ensure continued compliance and operational success. Karaoke businesses should prioritize legal education and seek expert guidance to navigate the complexities of copyright law and other regulatory requirements effectively. Clear social media policies that address the use of copyrighted material and customer interactions are vital for minimizing legal risks and maximizing the benefits of digital marketing. Implementing robust reputation management strategies, including prompt responses to online reviews and engagement with customers, can help maintain a positive public image and reduce the impact of negative feedback. Businesses should monitor changes in copyright enforcement and social media regulations, adapting their practices accordingly. Forming partnerships with music rights organizations or utilizing technology solutions can streamline compliance efforts.

A Proposed Settlement and Distribution Structure for Music Royalties in Korea and Their Artificial Intelligence-Based Applications

Digital music is one of the most important commodities on the market due to music royalty distribution in Korea. As the music market has been transformed into a digital music market by means such as downloading and streaming, the distribution of music royalties via online service providers (OSPs) has become a highly important issue for music rights holders. Currently, one of the most important issues in music royalty distribution in Korea is the unfair distribution of royalties due to the indiscriminate repeat streaming of digital music. To prevent this, music consumption log data from several OSPs were collected via a day-based system; however, there was a limit on the identification of detailed information on the use of music in its current state. This paper analyzes the structural problems and limitations related to the settlement of music royalties and provides a structure in which there can be transparent settlement and distribution between users and rights holders as an institutional measure. We also propose various AI (artificial intelligence)-based applications using music consumption log data. The proposed system will hopefully be used for public purposes.

Legal Protection for Music Copyright: Comparative Study between Indonesia and Malaysia

Music copyrights are not only considered as commodities but also considered as private property which must be recognized and protected by the state. In Indonesia, legal protection for copyright holders and creators is conducted through the National Collective Management Organization, while in Malaysia those issues are handled by Music Rights Malaysia Berhad. The purpose of this research using a comparative legal concept approach is to provide information about music copyright protection in Indonesia and Malaysia regarding legal issues regarding the position of the music copyright protection agency as well as prosecution and legal remedies for copyright infringements within the country and across countries. This study used normative juridical legal research. The results of study show that National Collective Management Institute (NCMI) and Music Rights Malaysia Berhad (MRM) have the same characteristics, namely as independent institutions and have attributive authority to take legal action against Music copyright violations. Furthermore, MRM has a narrower range of royalty collection than NCMI. In addition, MRM has no obligation to mediate if the case is a civil case. Besides, legal efforts that can be carried out by NCMI and MRM can be through the realm of criminal or casuistry litigation or arbitration.

Online Rights’ Withdrawal and Collective Management – Harmonizing the Online Music Rights Withdrawals for a Trans-Atlantic Streaming Economy

Online Rights’ Withdrawal and Collective Management – Harmonizing the Online Music Rights Withdrawals for a Trans-Atlantic Streaming Economy

Does social media pay for music artists? Quantitative evidence on the co-evolution of social media, streaming and live music

ABSTRACT Recent commentaries on the music industry have emphasised the importance of social media in creating a monetisable fan base. However, no quantitative evidence yet exists regarding the correlation between social media follower numbers and artist income. Using a unique dataset of 255 artists signed to a large UK-based independent music publisher, we undertake growth curve modelling to provide a novel quantitative analysis of the correlation between following across major social media and streaming platforms and royalty income from music rights. Findings from our modelling suggest that while there is no correlation between numbers of followers on major social media platforms and an artist’s total royalty earnings, there is a strong correlation between numbers of followers and royalties from music streaming specifically. Set in the context of the high level of income precarity being experienced amongst independent artists, this finding suggests that a positive co-evolution is occurring between social media platforms and music streaming with potentially significant increases in artist royalty incomes resulting from increases in followers. Similarly, our modelling identifies a strong correlation between an artist’s following on streaming platforms and total live music royalties, supporting the notion of a positive co-evolution between streaming and live music incomes.

The making of box-office collection: qualitative insights from Bollywood

PurposeThis study explores the making of box-office collection using the Indian film industry, Bollywood, as a case.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducts in-depth interviews with cinematic experts in the Indian film industry and analyzes the interview transcripts using thematic analysis.FindingsThis study uncovers several noteworthy findings. First, films that drew both general (MASS audience) and niche (CLASS audience) viewers dominate the box office. Second, viewers prefer to see films that are based on true events, and their engagement will be deeper if the subject of the film resonates with them. Third, stakeholder share is variable and changes over time. Fourth, the marketing budget for a film is typically higher than its production budget, and it is determined by the producer's financial resources. Fifth, the dominance of big over small banner films motivates the latter to pursue online rather than cinematic releases. Finally, Internet access creates value and returns on investment through sales of satellite and musical rights, while strategic promotion and distribution reap maximum benefit for box-office collection.Originality/valueUnlike past studies that rely on secondary data, this study uses primary qualitative data to explore the making of box-office collection. This study also focuses on an alternative film industry, Bollywood, as it is a vast context that remains underexplored.

Diminishing Dreams

Diminishing Dreams

The Future of Music Copyright Collectives in the Digital Streaming Age

The Future of Music Copyright Collectives in the Digital Streaming Age

Compulsory Licensing Under Copyright Law: A Study of Its Impact on Music Rights

The present legal framework doesn’t seem to effectively address the issue with respect to music industries and as a result, the Music industry is facing declining profits. “With multiple appeals pending in this regard, there is a need for the legislature to ensure that the Copyright Board is constituted as per certain minimum legal standards so that the questions on its integrity come to rest.” This is fundamental as the question has proceeded for right around 10 years now, and its decision will have sway on an enormous number of interests in the business, just as the overall population. The development of such Statutory Tribunals in India has been irregular and without a uniform example. The choices given by these courts just as their protected legitimacy have been addressed in various cases. This has prompted questions being brought about the straightforwardness up in their functioning just as decency in the methodology embraced by these courts. The technique for the arrangement of the individuals just as the structure of the councils has been struck somewhere near the Courts every once in a while. It should be acknowledged that the tribunals have come to remain, as the Supreme Court has brought up that it is well inside the force of the legislature to constitute such bodies and these are not, in essence, violative of the doctrine of separation of powers. Be that as it may, endeavors should be made to regularize the strategies, organizations, and audit/allure of choices of councils. The capabilities for the enrollment for these courts should be set down in order to guarantee their freedom from the leader.

A Competitive Approach for Licensing Music Rights

A Competitive Approach for Licensing Music Rights

Consortium Blockchain Smart Contracts for Musical Rights Governance in a Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) Use Case

Private and permissioned blockchains are conceptualized and mostly assembled for fulfilling corporations’ demands and needs in the context of their own premises. This paper presents a complete and sophisticated end-to-end permissioned blockchain application for governance and management of musical rights endorsed by smart contract development. In a music industry use case, this disclosed solution monitors and regulates conflicting musical rights of diverse entities under a popular permissioned distributed ledger technology network. The proposed implementation couples various and distinct business domains across the music industry organizations and non-profit blockchain associations.

Black creative genius matters: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the Jazz and People’s Movement, and the politics of “black classical music.”

ABSTRACT The Jazz and People’s Movement, led by multi-instrumentalist and Atlantic Records recording star Rahsaan Roland Kirk, began disrupting network television talk shows in 1970. The movement aimed to stop the erasure of “black creative genius” not only from the nation’s television airwaves, but from its collective history and memory – to make that which was practically invisible visible once again. But Rahsaan Roland Kirk and the Jazz and People’s Movement do not fit neatly into the usual categories historians use to describe the politics of the “long Sixties.” Kirk occupied a hybrid position – equal parts radical, reformist, and countercultural – and fashioned himself as what scholars such as Elizabeth Jelin and Lorena Oropeza have called “memory entrepreneurs”- men and women who give voice to those disappeared or otherwise silenced by the state. Rahsaan Roland Kirk acted as jazz’s foremost memory entrepreneur not to expose state violence, exactly, but to reveal the whitewashing – the disappearing – of black creative genius out of American popular memory. That whitewashing falls into another category of violence – cultural violence – executed in service of the maintenance of American racial hierarchies. This essay restores both Kirk’s and the Jazz and People’s Movement’s places in the respective histories of the long civil rights movement, Black Power, and the counterculture. It shows how easily the cultural politics of the three – so often treated separately by historians – overlapped and were intertwined. As such, the essay argues for Kirk as a prominent black political artist who illuminated the intersection of popular music and civil rights politics over the long Sixties.

EU Copyright Reform: Grappling With the Google Effect

Sweeping changes are coming to copyright law in the European Union. Following four years of negotiations, the European Parliament in April 2019 approved the final text of the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive. The new directive contains provisions for enhancing cross-border access to content available through digital subscription services, enabling new uses of copyrighted works for education and research, and, most controversially, “clarifying” the role of online services in the distribution of copyrighted works. Article 17 of the DSM Directive is directed to the last of these goals. It was designed to address the so-called value gap — the music industry’s longstanding complaint that YouTube underpays music rights holders for streams of user-uploaded videos containing claimed copyrighted content. The text of the DSM Directive nowhere mentions YouTube, but anyone versed in the political economy of digital copyright knows that Article 17 was designed specifically to make YouTube pay. The important question in the wake of Article 17’s adoption is who else will pay — and in what ways. This Article offers a focused examination of Article 17 as a public law created to settle a private score between the music industry and YouTube. Following an introduction in Part I, Part II explains and critiques the “value gap” as a policy rationale for altering the scope of copyright safe harbors. Part III breaks down the terms of the European Commission’s original proposal for Article 13 (which later became Article 17) in relation to existing provisions of the E-Commerce Directive and the Information Society Directive. Part IV surveys human rights-related and competition-related criticisms of the Commission’s proposal. Part V analyzes the adopted text of Article 17 with attention to the nature and adequacy of revisions made to answer the criticisms outlined in Part IV. Part VI provides a conclusion.

Multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use in the internal market: Directive 2014/26/EU

This paper will consider questions around the Directive 2014/26/EU concerning the multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use in the internal market, considering the digital economy and the context of the Digital Agenda for Europe and the Europe 2020 Strategy aiming for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, and the Article 167 and others of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The paper will consider the need to provide of coordination of national rules to avoid the inefficiencies in the exploitation of copyright and related rights across the internal market, looking for the benefit of rightholders and users, and the need of metadata systems for an effective aggregation of repertories. The paper will also consider the derogation for online music rights required by a broadcaster to communicate or make available to the public its radio and television programs.

Multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use in the internal market: Directive 2014/26/EU

This paper will consider questions around the Directive 2014/26/EU concerning the multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use in the internal market, considering the digital economy and the context of the Digital Agenda for Europe and the Europe 2020 Strategy aiming for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, and the Article 167 and others of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The paper will consider the need to provide of coordination of national rules to avoid the inefficiencies in the exploitation of copyright and related rights across the internal market, looking for the benefit of rightholders and users, and the need of metadata systems for an effective aggregation of repertories. The paper will also consider the derogation for online music rights required by a broadcaster to communicate or make available to the public its radio and television programs.

Marching to the Beat of the EU's Drum: Refining the Collective Management of Music Rights in the United States to Facilitate the Growth of Interactive Streaming

Marching to the Beat of the EU's Drum: Refining the Collective Management of Music Rights in the United States to Facilitate the Growth of Interactive Streaming

Licensing Issues Hindering the Development of Online Music and Audiovisual Services in Europe

The difficulty of obtaining pan-European licenses for music and audiovisual works has been and continues to be a major barrier to development of European-wide music and video distribution services. Music rights have been managed by collection societies with territorial monopolies, requiring commercial users to negotiate separate licensing agreements in each territory. Recent actions by the European Commission and industry participants have resulted in the fragmentation of music rights as artists and publishers have withdrawn their rights from some national collection societies. As a result obtaining pan-European rights to a global repertoire of music has become more complex. Rights to audiovisual works on the other hand have been controlled by studios, distributors and producers, and pan-European licensing has been restricted by commercial decisions.Future licensing systems may be partially modelled after the Nordisk Copyright Bureau or Satellite and Cable Directive, both of which include multi-territorial, one-stop-shop licensing and compulsory licensing by collection societies. Licensing of audiovisual works appears to be moving in a similar direction, as a recent decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union declared territorial restrictions in broadcast licenses as anti-competitive, which may force broadcasts to be licensed on a pan-European basis and enables the consumption of broadcast services across borders

Economics of music publishing: copyright and the market

The paper argues that the paradigmatic shift from the sale of printed music to exploiting and managing musical rights that took place in music publishing during the early years of the twentieth century was due to the changing market rather than to changes in copyright law. On the one hand, copyright law was ineffectual in controlling piracy throughout the nineteenth century, and on the other hand, performing rights were ignored by music publishers for over 70 years; these points suggest that copyright was not the main reason behind the success of the industry. Rather than leading entrepreneurially (the current view of dynamism in the creative industries), publishers ‘followed the money’ and adapted their business models only when new streams of income from new forms of exploitation through sound recording, broadcasting and film became available as a result of exogenous technical progress. Publishers were locked-in to sales revenue as their business model, though when switching to the new business model of rights management took place, the costs seem not to have been greatly significant. The paper takes an historical approach to the development of music publishing viewed through the lens of present-day issues. The research has resonance for the transition from sales to licensing digital works that is taking place in the creative industries today and puts into perspective the relative significance of market forces and copyright law in the process.

Moving Music Licensing into the Digital Era: More Competition and Less Regulation

The system for licensing music in the United States for public performances through radio, television, digital services and other distribution media is complicated, arcane and heavily regulated. Its basic structure is oriented toward transmitting music through analog channels. Although much of the pricing of music rights is supposed to be based on competitive prices, the current interdependent system of collective licensing of performing rights and widespread regulation of music prices (royalties) is inconsistent with the development of a competitive market and the associated efficiencies. Collective licensing by a handful of performing rights organizations (PROs) provides the major rationale for price regulation. However, the existence of price regulation has entrenched collective licensing and the position of those PROs. A more competitive system entails moving away from collective licensing. In this paper we review the current structure of the music licensing system and suggest ways of making it more competitive and less reliant on regulation. Central to our proposals are: a) a comprehensive, standardized database of musical compositions (including the specific sound recording version, where relevant) and their owners so that distributors and users can readily identify from whom they need to license rights, along with a “safe harbor” provision that would provide the appropriate incentives for rights owners to contribute their information to the database; b) a greater ability of intermediaries to aggregate the various categories of music ownership rights; and c) the consequent development of more competitive negotiations and transactions between music rights holders and music distributors.

Implementation of Directive 2014/26/EU on Collective Management and Multi-Territorial Licensing of Musical Rights in Regulating the Tariff-Setting Systems in Central and Eastern Europe

Procedures for setting the tariffs in collective management of copyright in Central and Eastern Europe are currently more or less intensively coloured by the influence of state authorities (such as intellectual property/copyright offices or competent ministers) or quasi-state authorities (such as copyright expert boards, councils or mediators). This article presents the results and conclusions drawn from research on tariff-setting procedures and criteria in the national laws of 13 Central and Eastern European countries as well as in European law and jurisprudence. Furthermore, this article analyses the provisions of Directive 2014/26/EU on collective management and multi-territorial licensing of musical rights, relevant for procedures and criteria for setting tariffs for both traditional and online use. Specific challenges introduced by this Directive are discussed, for authorised and unauthorised uses in the online world, as well as the influence of the Directive on the amount of remuneration for the repertoire represented by collective management organisations (CMOs). According to Directive 2014/26/EU, the position of CMOs in licensing and enforcing the rights collectively in the digital environment has changed tremendously, since they are not able to rely on their monopoly position nor on the presumption of representation, on the one hand, and they are invited to act multi-territorially, on the other hand. In these circumstances their cultural and social role is put at stake, which also affects cultural diversity in Europe. Finally, it is emphasised that in light of the shift in the paradigm of collective management from mono- to multi-territorial management, introduced by Directive 2014/26/EU, the problem of applicable law arises in relation to tariff-setting procedures established by the national laws of EU Member States.