Appeal Sought in Copyright Board Decision on Streaming Music Fees in Canada
Last month, the Copyright Board finally handed down a ruling over how much companies who want to stream music online have to pay. As a preventative measure, these companies had been paying into a fund at the rate of about one dollar per 1,000 plays. The Copyright Board said that this was too much and on May 16 said that 10 cents(ish) per 1,000 plays was appropriate.
Needless to say, a lot of stakeholders are most upset that they’re going to be receiving one-tenth of what they had requested. This includes all the major labels and dozens of indie music groups. Everyone on the music side is now asking for a judicial review in the matter.
This could get messy.You can read more at FYI Music News.
To me this speaks to the failure of the industry to generate ad revenues or subscription revenues. $1 per 1,000 plays roughly equates to a $1 cost for 50 hours of content… or about a months worth of content for the average listener. This seems to me to be a fair and reasonable exchange of value for service. The onus should be on streaming services to find a way to be profitable, not lowering the cost of rights because they can’t make it work.