BPN 1153 Music land: ship passing in the night

Anti-trust measure against the music collecting societies are yielding a lot of emotion. Musicians surprisingly appear to be against the trust mesures, proposed by the European Commission.

The Eurpean Commission has announced that it was looking into the matter of the collecting societies, organisation collecting the roalties on behalf of musicians and muic publishers. The monopoly-like behaviour of these organisations has irked many musicians. So the EC thought that measures should be taken, not only on behalf of the musisicians and publishers, but also for the music distributors. If Apple wants to set up iTunes in Europe, it will have to visit all 27 collecting societies in Europe, which will result in 27 different agreements. The EC is finishing up its survey and gets ready to take measures.

But at one of their hearings they found some musicians oppossing the measures. On bhalf of the European Composers and Songwritwers Alliance (ECSA) Robin Gibb of the BeeGees together with two European composers warned the EC that standrdising the royalties’system in Europe will be detimental to the musicians and only benefit the distributors. More than 220 artists, They will come in and press for lower royalties, given that they serve all 27 countries with their offer. In fact these distributing parties will offer a lower percentage of royalty, while the music will be distributd on a broader scale. The musicians claim, that they will get more money from 27 collecting societies that from one distributor. The EC disagrees and believes that songwrieters, componists, singers and music publishers can expect more money, as one negotiator can bring more force to bear than 27 small collecting societies.
It will be intersteing to see how the EC is going to handle. For the EC found the musicians at once at the other side of the table. It had expected acclaim against the monopolistic measres of the collecting societies and support for a pan-European music license system.

Blog Posting Number: 1153

Tags: music, collecting societies