No more jaw-jaw, as PRS sues SoundCloud over music streaming UK performing rights society the PRS* has told its 111,000 members that it is now reluctantly suing SoundCloud after five years of fruitless negotiations, for refusing to properly compensate its members after streaming their works. “Unfortunately, [SoundCloud] continues to deny it needs a PRS licence for its existing service …
:| Exactly what is it the PRS thinks they should be compensated for? Given all I've personally seen is Japanese indie stuff, pretty sure they don't have any right for people listening to that. Okay there was also a track this morning a work mate linked me to so I could identify which classic game a sound loop came from (Mario) but I'm also pretty sure PRS doesn't have much to do with that either.
> all I've personally seen is Japanese indie stuff
Have you tried typing anything other than "Japanese indie" into the search box?
And you do get that the PRS are arguing about the content that is actually on Soundcloud, not the content that some anonymous bloke says he's personally seen, right?
Like the Golden Age of Hip Hop (which benefitted from a brief window between sampling being easy to do and it being something you had to clear), there seems to have been a golden age for the internet, where platform creators were able to turn a blind eye to copyright infringement by their users and get rich, in part, through other people's content.
Now that golden age is over, the surviving internet giants have the bargaining power for licensing not to cost them a significant amount and the startups need their backing in order to survive.
When I had a pub the PRS would regularly send threatening letters wanting me to pay up. Unfortunately the letters would never reveal the cost of joining, and there was no pricing available on their web-site. So for years I would just bin the letters. To comply we had live musicians play non-copyright traditional folk songs. cough!
Love the Banksy!
I to had a run in with them, when we simply enquired about a license should we go ahead for a project. To them this mean't we no in violation and we should be coughing up a few grand, because we were apparently playing unlicensed music.
I took half a dozen emails and phone calls to get them to understand the difference between an enquiry and actually requiring them.
That said, I think Spotify should cough up money they owe.
Users sneer at muscisians' organisations trying to get money for musicians ('music wants to be free!') but have no trouble accepting companies making their owners into billionaires by using the creations of the musicians. It's not hard to develop these, so the reward for building a platform is extortionate.
Problem here is that if this cartel was paid what they would like, this particular point would likely change little.
Could we maybe in future articles have a breakdown of how this missing payment would have been shared between the collection agency, the labels, and how much eventually makes it to the actual musicians and songwriters? Or might this screw up the story?
I worked for a similar licensing organisation (for writers) and we shovelled money out the door to our members. Some of them were absolutely dependent on our payments to survive. And we maximised the payments going out by paying ourselves tiny wages. I finally had to leave, as I liked eating every day.
Can't remember the amount, but I know our local hairdressers grudgingly pay the PRS some eye watering amount just to be able to have the radio playing in the salon.
That always struck me as PRS double dip, the radio station are already paying their own fees to PRS, but IANL & so shafting people for as much cash as possible is not like oxygen to me, I obviously have the wrong mindset!
The fee the radio station pay is for private listening by individual users, not for playing the music to a large group of people -- for the latter, the station would have to pay much more. A bit weird, considering that the radio is being broadcast, but on the other hand it does make some sense, as businesses such as hairdressers play the radio not just so they can hear it but because it adds to the ambience of the establishment. I think most hairdressers would tell you that their customers like having music playing, so why shouldn't the business pay for it, just as they pay for other things that may have nowt directly to do with haircuts but which their customers like, sich as nice decor and decent air conditioning?
I believe you are required to have a licence whether you're playing the radio or your own records.
The licencing of records is a bit weird. Back in the days of vinyl, record companies controlled this by insisting that you weren't paying for the round piece of plastic but for a licence for the music recorded on it (it stated this in the small print on the sleeve). Then they launched CDs, and some people rightly said, "OK, well, you say I already own the licence to this piece of music and the circle of plastic is free, so can I have a free upgrade to CD, please?" and suddenly the record companies decided that no, you hadn't been buying licences at all, you'd been buying round pieces of plastic. In which case, the circle of plastic is yours and you can do what the hell you want with it. But apparently they don't want that either.
I do both upload to Soundcloud my own works, as well as listen to others. From what I can gather, these are works that the artists in question have uploaded and are, from what I have seen, created by them. Not uploaded by other people. (I am not denying this doesn't happen, but the majority of items I have seen online, they *seem* kosher).
So what exactly is the beef the PRS have with Soundcloud? I can't quite see the reasoning, or if it is obvious, I am just thick.
A lot of bedroom DJs upload their latest mixes to soundcloud, whch I'm pretty sure is without permission from the copyright holder. That said, a couple of DJs that I follow have all but disappeared citing pressure from soundcloud regarding their use of unlicensed content - they just moved to mixcloud and others in the end.
Seriously, the worms are out of the can when it comes to music. You simply cannot stop it being distributed in an unauthorised manner. The whole game has changed, Nobody I know actually buys music anymore - it's all streaming or freeloading, but they will pay obscene sums to go to a gig. As I've said before, the music itself has become the advert for other money making products musicians offer, such as gigs or merchandising.
I too upload my own crap to soundcloud, and it's available to stream for free, although god help anybody who actually listens to it
The PRS and PPS are an anachronism in this day and age.
You are confusing performers and writers. The PRS exists to protect writers; writers join and assign certain rights to the PRS in exchange for having royalties collected and paid out (less a small fee). Singer-songwriters aside, most writers don't put on these supposedly lucrative gigs of which you speak. Indeed, all a writer would see from a gig is their royalty, paid by the venue (who in turn usually deduct it from the performer's box office), and collected (natch) by the PRS.
But it should be reasonably priced.
Services like PRS and PPL are really very expensive, and for small producers don't generally provide a lot of income for them. The most successful small producers I have seen are ones that have embraced the world we now live in and publish it through a variety of modern platforms.
I pay for a Spotify subscription, and when there's an artist I really want to support, I go and buy their merchandise, or buy an actual copy of their music (eg. Tessa Violet/Meekakitty, and her album). I know plenty of people who do this also. On top of this, there are some artists I love who publish their music on Bandcamp (Danny B and (A) in Mono are 2 that come to mind), and I buy each new album from there also.
If more artists embraced these new platforms, they wouldn't really need services like PRS and PPL - they are remnants of the old industry who haven't adapted yet.
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