Copyright Board Announces Digital Music Royalty Rates
By Anna Johnson on October 7th, 2008After extensive lobbying from the record industry, digital music sellers and others, the three judges comprising the Copyright Royalty Board upheld the current royalty rate for CDs and other physical music recordings, while establishing new rates for downloads, ring tones and other digital music services.
The ruling enforces the payment of mechanical royalties (paid to music songwriters and publishers) – by those entities licensing the music. The judges maintained the rate for physical recordings at 9.1 cents per track and set the same rate for permanent digital downloads. This equates the value of physical discs with downloads from retail outlets such as Apple iTunes and Amazon.com.
The board also established a mechanical royalty rate of 24 cents for master tones and ring tones made from a snippet of music from a full recording. Previously, copyright holders had negotiated royalty payments with users. The new rates will be in effect from now until 2012.
Source: Ben Sisario, “First Royalty Rates Set for Digital Music”, The New York Times, October 2, 2008
