April 2012 Events of Interest

April 4, 2012 @ USC - I am looking forward to serving as a panelist at USC's "Launching Your Career -- an event providing direct access to the music profession’s most successful"

Panelists include:

• Cedar Boschan ’99, Partner at Hurewitz, Boschan & Co. LLP
• Laura Connelly, Director of Presentations for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association
• Julia Cser ’01, Executive and Artistic Director of the Maestro Foundation
• Gregg Field, Producer and Recording Artist at Concord Records
• Gordon Goodwin, Performing Artist with Wingood Music Productions, Inc.
• Garry Kief, President/CEO of STILETTO Entertainment
• Bear McCreary ’02, Composer
• Don Passman, Music Attorney
• Adrian Spence, Artistic Director, Camerata Pacifica
• Chad Smith, Vice President of Artistic Planning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic
• Association
• Moderator: Gail Eichenthal, Program Director for KUSC

April 17, 2012 @ Lawry's - The Assoc. of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) presents David Israelite - President and CEO of NMPA

April 24, 2012 @ Sportsmen's Lodge - The California Copyright Conference presents "OH CANADA: It's Not The 51st State When It Comes To Managing Your Music Rights" where agents of both English and French-speaking repertoire will discuss exploitation and revenue collection in Canada.

Sound Exchange Monopoly Preserved... For Now

Billboard reports today that D.C.'s US Appeals Court Declined To Rule On CRB due to a missed deadline.

Some background: Royalty Logic had filed a motion questioning the constitutionality of the US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB). If the courts agreed with Royalty Logic's arguments, rates previously set by the CRB may have been invalidated, which is why many groups, including the NMPA, opposed the motion.

The good news about the US Appeals Court's choice is that the rate setting process will not have to restart at square one. However, I think it is bad news that left intact is the CRB's effective decision to grant Sound Exchange a limited monopoly as the sole designee entitled to collect master performance royalties in the United States.

Royalty Logic had originally filed its motion because it too wanted to be an master performance royalty collection agent.

I do not support Royalty Logic's positions on all matters, but ultimately I am concerned that recording artists and record labels will have no choice of collection agents for the master performance royalties contemplated by the Digital Milennium Copyright Act (unlike songwriters and publishers, which may choose to affiliate with one of three major performance rights societies: ASCAP, BMI or SESAC).

Sound Exchange may have won this battle, but perhaps there will soon be another opportunity to introduce competition in the master performance royalty collection marketplace. After all, one thing that set the US music industry apart from the rest of the world is that it allowed competition amongst collection agents.

The posts on this blog confer no rights or warranties. The opinions expressed on this site are my own and may not represent those of my firm. © 2009, Cedar Boschan. To request permission to reproduce, please contact boschan@royaltyauditors.com.