After an extremely long negotiation period, “pure-play” webcasters (those who are not part of large corporations or are also over-the-air broadcasters) have reached a settlement for royalty payments to SoundExchange. The agreement includes the massively popular Pandora.
On his RAIN blog, one of the chief industry negotiators, Kurt Hanson of AccuRadio, wrote:
“This agreement has three main benefits for those who choose to elect it:
(1) It cuts the CRB per-performance rates for 2007-10 by approximately a third to a half.
(2) It establishes per-performance rates for 2011-15 — with annual increases, to be sure, but not as huge as the kind of annual increases the CRB was coming up with. (And without the risk and expense of participating in another CRB proceeding for that period.)
(3) And it gives smaller webcasters a chance to grow into these rates — with a “percentage of revenues” royalty rate for a webcaster’s early years (about 14% until they hit $1.25 million in annual revenues, and 25% for about a year thereafter).”
