The Copyright Royalty Board in the United States has issued an initial determination and accompanying regulations that raise the amount of royalty available to songwriters for streaming, which will impact services such as Pandora, Spotify, Apple and YouTube. Variety has an excellent article on the impact of the decision, which seems substantial—almost boosting royalties by 50%. Paula Parisi of Variety explains: The ruling effects only the mechanical license, a term that literally references the rolls mechanically cranked through player pianos – arguably the first mass distribution media for recorded music. Albums, CDs and downloads also fall under the mechanical license (the thought being that like piano rolls, these are “physical copies,” although the idea that a digital stream is concrete by virtue of being stored at various points (on a server, in a buffer) is somewhat specious; analog broadcast signals also collect at various points, and…
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