Of course some reckon the collecting societies will be forced to reinvent themselves not because of EC intervention, or even because of EC guidelines, but because the major publishing houses and record companies will sidestep them in a bid to create a more globally focused rights world.
With that in mind, Warner/Chappell Music has announced it will be operating a one-stop shop regarding the digital rights to the new Radiohead album 'In Rainbows' which, of course, has already been involved in one music industry innovation - the pay what you want promotion. The album is available for free download via the band's own website until today, and will then get a proper release via XL (ATO in the US) at the end of the month.
According to Billboard, the new innovation means that people in the digital domain will be able to licence mechanical, performance, sync and lyrical digital rights on a global basis directly from the publisher, side-stepping traditional collecting societies. The trade mag quotes Warner/Chappell's VP European Legal And Business Affairs, Jane Dyball, as describing the new one-stop shop service as an "experiment" adding it should benefit Radiohead while "providing all their licensees with a new, highly flexible service".
So there you go. Elsewhere in Radiohead news, the band have revealed the lengths they went to in order to stop their new album being unofficially leaked online before their own online release. The band's Colin Greenwood says the band destroyed CDRs of their studio recordings, and labeled master recordings with fake names in case anyone outside the band saw them and was tempted to make a copy. Greenwood: "It felt like a gigantic risk. Like Mission Impossible, almost. We destroyed all CDs after every day of recording. And on the master we'd always write a name which probably nobody would listen to if we had lost it: 'Eagles: Greatest Hits', 'Kula Shaker demos', 'Phill Collins hip-hop covers'".