NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) – The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the Nashville Songwriters Association International, and the Digital Media Association (DMA) announced yesterday (August 31) a settlement with streaming services for certain mechanical streaming rates in the US for the years 2023-2027: 15.35%.
The NMPA, a trade organization representing major music publishers including Universal, Warner, and Sony, and the DMA, which represents Spotify Technology SA, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, and Sirius XM Holdings Inc.’s Pandora, have hammered out a deal days before they were set to go to trial in front of the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB). The board is a three-judge panel that sets the mechanical statutory licensing rates that digital-service providers pay publishers for audio streams of their songs.
The agreement means publishers will get as much as 15.35% of music streamers’ revenue, phased in during the five-year period from 2023 to the end of 2027. The settlement follows the CRB’s decision in July to retroactively uphold a rate of 15.1% for the 2018 to 2022 period – a 44% increase from the prior rate.
Before the July decision, the two sides were in a debate over proposals for the future rates. The new agreement aligns streamers’ and songwriters’ interests and will help generate collaboration, executives said in a joint interview.
For years, publishers and songwriters have bristled over payments from streaming and say they are historically about one-fifth the amounts that labels and recording artists collect. Sources, reported by Variety, said that both sides were eager to avoid another protracted, distracting and brutally expensive legal battle, to put it mildly: The fight over the previous, 2018-22 rate period went on for more than three years and cost many millions of dollars in legal and other fees.
NMPA President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) David Israelite said, “This historic settlement is the result of songwriters making their voices heard. Instead of going to trial and continuing years of conflict, we instead move forward in collaboration with the highest rates ever, guaranteed. We thank the digital services for coming to the table and treating creators as business partners. Critically, since this is a percentage rate, we know that as streaming continues to grow exponentially, we will see unprecedented value of songs.”
