It seems that the ongoing fight between Apple and Spotify may affect other music streaming sites as well. The New York Times has reported that Apple has proposed simplifying the complex way that songwriting royalties are paid when in comes to on-demand streaming services.
According to the report, Apple’s proposal, made with the Copyright Royalty Board, would see streaming services pay 9.1 cents in songwriting royalties for every 100 times a song is played. This proposal would replace the current federal rules for streaming rates, which has been broken down to different types of services.
While this proposal would indeed simplify the whole royalties problem that songwriters have with these types of services, it would also cause paid subscription services to cost quite a bit more than the current rates. Besides that, this proposal would affect all subscription-based music streaming services, including Spotify, Tidal, Google Music, Amazon, and other services.
Don’t get too alarmed yet though, as Apple’s filing was made as part of a proceeding by the Copyright Royalty Board to set statutory rates for downloads and interactive streaming services. Spotify, Google, Pandora, Amazon and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are all expected to file their proposals by Friday. Once the Copyright Royalty Board finalizes the proposal though, said proposal would be put into effect from 2018 to 2022.
Source: The New York Times