Composers and songwriters are expected to arrive in Brussels later today to shout and rant about rumoured plans by European Commission types to force the royalty collecting societies to be more competitive - basically by trying to initiate some kind of price war between societies in different European countries.
As previously reported, the EC has expressed various concerns about royalty collecting societies before, mainly because there is often only one collecting society per country, and they tend to dominate in their home territory.
EC officials have been encouraging collecting societies for a while to start offering pan-European services, so that [a] digital music platforms can get pan-European licences, rather than having to do licence deals with societies in every country and [b] different societies will end up offering the same licences as each other, mean music users can shop around, encouraging societies to be more competitive and to end what some see as a 'cartel' in the world of music licensing.
The EC have released various statements on this issue in recent years, and some music publishers and collecting societies have announced measures to become more pan-European and competitive in response. But according to Music Week the Directorate General for Competition, headed by Neelie Kroes, is expected to call for more action, and in particular that societies to better compete on price.
Some in the songwriting community fear a price war will ultimately force the royalties publishers and songwriters receive down, while jeopardising the future of certain societies who cannot compete on a pan-European level, but who provide important services for their native songwriting communities.
Which is why some songwriters will go to Brussels to state their concerns to Kroes et al today. Among them will be David Ferguson, Chairman of the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters and the Alliance of Popular Composer Organisations in Europe, and Bee Gee Robin Gibb who, as previously reported, now heads up global songwriter body CISAC.