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CMU at South By South West
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 3 March 2023
CMU’s Chris Cooke will be at the South By South West festival and conference in Austin, Texas later this month to take part in a panel called ‘Getting Songwriters Paid – Fix The Leaky Pipes!’
It’s a session based on research from the ‘Dissecting The Digital Dollar’ project that CMU works on for the UK’s Music Managers Forum looking at how songwriters get paid when their music is streamed.
In the US, the song royalty rate for streaming is subject to a compulsory licence, with the rate set by the country’s Copyright Royalty Board. The CRB-set rate has been slowly increasing in recent years, a move initially opposed but more recently accepted by the streaming services.
Under the most recent CRB ruling, the top line revenue share rate for songs will increase to 15.35% over the next few years.
However, says the blurb for this SXSW panel, while that increase should be “a major cause for celebration, unless outdated industry infrastructures and distribution mechanisms are urgently addressed, the impact of this progress might be limited”.
“Research by the MMF shows songwriters are currently waiting several years to receive payment for streaming. Due to the tangled complex of collecting society and publisher networks, up to 30% of royalties can be deducted in admin costs”.
“Millions more dollars of ‘unmatched’ revenues are torrenting into black boxes, before being re-apportioned by market share to the biggest rightsholders. Come hear about the MMF ‘Song Royalties Manifesto’ which outlines how this mess can be fixed”.
The session takes place on 14 Mar at 4pm in Room 18AB of the Austin Convention Center, with MMF’s Annabella Coldrick, AMRA’s Tomas Ericsson, and artist manager and former Hipgnosis Chief Catalogue Officer Amy Thomson also joining the conversation. Info here.
