On April 30, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a decision setting the license rate and terms that three online services must pay to songwriters and publishers in order to publicly perform songs over the Internet. United States v. American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, [SD NY, 2007].
The court imposed a blanket license fee based on 2.5 percent of each online company's adjusted total revenue, through 2009.
After making a "thorough consideration of the evidence submitted at the rate hearing" including the parties' own arms-length negotiations with record companies, as well as past agreements entered between ASCAP and cable subscription music service Music Choice, and Broadcast Music, Inc., RealNetworks and others, "the Court finds that a fee rate of 2.5 % of Applicants' music-use-adjusted revenue is reasonable," Senior District Judge William C. Conner wrote.
According to the court, this would result in 2006 fees of approximately $5.95 million for AOL and $6.76 million for Yahoo! The court did not offer calculations for the figure owed by RealNetworks.
Conner also rejected ASCAP's limitations with regard to AOL Music Now and RealNetworks, and applied the adjusted music-use factor to those sites as well. Accordingly, he ordered the parties to compute royalties due to ASCAP under this framework for the period beginning July 1, 2002 (for Yahoo!), Jan. 1, 2004 (for RealNetworks), and Jan. 1, 2005 (for AOL) through Dec. 31, 2009, in preparation of a final judgment order. |
