We will release the results of our most recent MLC awareness questionnaire soon, but here’s an interesting data point: 47% of respondents did not feel their voice was heard in crafting the Music Modernization Act. It would be interesting to see if any other survey has asked that question and what the results were.
Read: When Do I Get Paid by the MLC?
Copyright Office complaint webform
Take the anonymous 10 question MLC Awareness Survey
See the helpful HFA rate charts to explain how mechanical royalty rates are calculated.
Dylan Smith at Digital Music News asks the question, “Is the MLC Putting Smaller Streaming Platforms out of Business?” We’ve raised this very question long, long ago, back in early 2018 when the Music Modernization Act was getting passed and the chorus of braying by MLC supporters was at a fever pitch. Everyone ignored the obvious flaws in the legislation, especially the anticompetitive nuances that Dylan has highlighted today.
But understand–this issue is not new. We raised it in the blogs, and Chris raised it to Congressional staff directly–he said the response was a hangdog “I know, I know. It’s what the parties wanted.”
In other words, Congressional staff knew it was stupid, but were being railroaded into doing it anyway by “the parties” (plural) and there are so many hours in the day. When staff said “the parties” back in 2018 before there was an MLC, guess who they meant? One of those parties was the Digital Media Association which still runs the “Digital Licensee Coordinator” or the DLC–which is essentially the companies with trillion-dollar market caps who we think of as Big Tech. (The DLC’s membership application is here.)
And as you will see, it’s more like is the DLC putting smaller streaming platforms out of business. (See the DLC membership assessment fees “explainer” for DLC members.)
And since the DLC appears dominated by Google, Amazon and Spotify, maybe the real issue is that it’s Thursday, so of course Big Tech wants to keep competition weak and vulnerable to being shut down or acquired. And the MLC and its promoters did nothing to stop it because of the pact between the MLC and the DLC that they would each keep anyone out of the vicinity of the Copyright Royalty Judges who might get in their way.
Of course the most ludicrous part of this is that these trillion-dollar companies don’t just eat the cost of running the DLC since by the time you get finished reading this post, they will have collectively grossed some sum well, well in excess of the annual operating costs.
But–as we will see, there may be some hope for brave startups to challenge the insider deal that penalizes them without giving them an opportunity to speak up for themselves.
As Dylan writes in DMN:
According to the document [establishing the insiders’ allocation of the fee structure], digital service providers have to cover the MLC’s startup fee ($33.5 million) via a “startup assessment,” or “the one-time administrative assessment for the startup phase of the Mechanical Licensing Collective.” This payment must be made alongside the first annual bill, which is due on February 15th, 2021; the second annual fee disclosure is due in November of the same year and must be paid by January of 2022, for a considerable overall obligation.
Total-wise, platforms “that have a Unique Sound Recordings Count” – or the average number of “royalty-bearing” works streamed or downloaded each month – of less than 5,000 will pay an annual minimum fee of $5,000, to a $60,000 annual minimum fee for those with over 5,000 such works. For DSPs that break the 5,000 threshold, it appears that 2021 will bring with it a low-end bill of $120,000.
Significantly, our source proceeded to indicate: “That’s just the minimum – the total assessment is dependent on market share, which is basically unpredictable at this point. And that’s on top of mechanical royalties for those who use the blanket license.”
This completely out of whack cost structure was obviously a major, major flaw in the Music Modernization Act–specifically the incredibly muddled and meandering Title I which established the Mechanical Licensing Collective and the DLC. The chickens are now coming home to roost.
As Chris wrote in Newsmax Finance on August 20, 2018:
[T]he problem [with the MMA] doesn’t come from songwriters. It comes from the real rule makers—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Spotify. And startups know which side butters their bread.
Public discussion of MMA has focused on the song collective and the compulsory blanket license for songs, but the mandated digital services collective is more troubling given the size of the players involved…Rule taker startups are governed by the rule maker DLC, but have no say in the DLC’s selection.
Like Microsoft’s anonymous amici, startups know their place —especially against Google, Amazon, and Facebook, whose monopoly bear hug on startups includes hosting, advertising and driving traffic.
The MMA authorizes these aggressive incumbents to effectively decide the price to startups for the “modernized” blanket license. Why? Because the MMA requires users of the license to pay for the lion’s share of the “administrative assessment,” the licensees’ collectivized administrative cost payment that the CBO estimates will be over $222 million for eight years….
Why should the government only permit one game in town? Rather than have the DLC run by the usual suspect monopolists, why not allow competition?
This is important–if startups can’t afford to buy-in to the license, it does them no good, and their biggest competitors decide the price of that license through the DLC.…
“Modernization” should make licensing easier: level the playing field for startups and protect them from famously predatory competitor incumbents, as well as copyright infringement lawsuits from the rule takers.
These are all good reasons for the private market solution. Competition at least gives startups hope for the pursuit of fair treatment.
“The parties” and everyone else ignored this warning (and of course, since it wasn’t included in a press release, the trade press did no investigation). This is exactly what Dylan is focused on in DMN. It was only a matter of time until the invoice for startups came due.
That invoice arrived as part of the “administrative assessment” hearing mandated by Congress in Title I. This is a curious procedure before the Copyright Royalty Judges that expressly excluded anyone from participating who might get in the way of the check that would reunite the Harry Fox Agency with its former owners. That order by the CRJs is the document that Dylan links to.
In a blog post at the time on MTP, Chris drilled down on the nuances of this settlement for the administrative assessment (which is what gives teeth to the mechanism to sandbag startups:
Notice two things: First, the CRJs’ adopt the position of the MLC and the DLC that the only people who could object to the settlement were “participants”. Who might that be? Why the DLC and the MLC, of course. There were other participants, most prominently the Songwriters Guild of America. SGA was hounded out of the proceeding because the MLC apparently did not want to include SGA in the negotiation of a settlement.
I can understand the complexity of a three-way negotiation with those pesky songwriters about a matter that affects all the songwriters in the world who have ever written a song or that may ever write a song. Those songwriters might really get in the way. What I do not understand, however, is why the songwriters would not be afforded the opportunity to at least comment on the settlement that carries the awesome power of the Leviathan behind it. I do understand how the rules came to be written the way they are, however.
And this leads to the other thing to observe about this ruling. “Because there were no non-settling participants…the proposed settlement was unopposed.” Rather tautological, right? How can the settlement be opposed if those who might oppose it are not allowed to do so?
Let’s be clear what “opposition” means in this context. You could just as easily say “improve” or “make fair”. And lest you think that this is yet another example of sloppy legislative drafting in the mistake-prone Title I, this time I don’t think it’s a mistake. I think it is exactly what the drafters intended.
This is all pretty darkly typical swampy behavior by the insiders and their lobbyists dedicated to lawyering their way to an unfair court order masquerading as a good thing for songwriters. Of course.
Here’s the ray of sunshine:
After the world “unopposed” the CRJs drop a footnote. And it is this footnote that is probably the most important point to the unrepresented songwriters and startups who either couldn’t afford to participate or who were afraid of back alley retaliation if they did.
“The Judges have been advised by their staff that some members of the public sent emails to the Copyright Royalty Board seeking to comment on the proposed settlement agreement.Neither the Copyright Act, nor the regulations adopted thereunder, provide for submission or consideration of comments on a proposed settlement by non-participants in an administrative assessment proceeding. Consequently, as a matter of law, the Judges could not, and did not, consider these ex parte communications in deciding whether to approve the proposed settlement. Additionally, the Judges’ non-consideration of these ex parte communications does not: (i) imply any opinion by the Judges as to the substantive merits of any statements contained in such communications; or (ii) reflect any inability of the Judges to question, [on their own motion without a filing from a participant] whether good cause exists to adopt a settlement and to then utilize all express or reasonably implied statutory authority granted to them to make a determination as to the existence…of good cause [to reject the settlement now or in the future].“
This footnote is very, very important. I would interpret it to mean that the CRJs may anticipate that they are directly or indirectly appealed or their decision is examined by the Congress that has ultimate oversight.
Note that the Judges clearly anticipate reviewing the assessment for “good cause” without a filling from the DLC or the MLC. It’s not clear exactly how that might happen, but it might be as simple as a startup complaining to the CRJs in an email.
So it seems to us that it’s only an MLC issue in that both the MLC and the DLC are each complicit in keeping outsiders away from the decisions about the administrative assessment and how it will be tagged to startups or smaller services. You know, “the parties” decided how the little people are to make do.
[Editor Charlie sez: The U.S. Copyright Office is proposing many different ways to regulate The MLC, which is the government approved mechanical licensing collective under MMA authorized to collect and pay out “all streaming mechanicals for every song ever written or that ever may be written by any songwriter in the world that is exploited in the United States under the blanket license.” The Copyright Office is submitting these regulations to the public to comment on. The way it works is that the Copyright Office publishes a notice on the copyright.gov website that describes the rule they propose making and then they ask for public comments on that proposed rule. They then redraft that proposed rule into a final rule and tell you if they took your comments into account. They do read them all!
The Copyright Office has a boatload of new rules to make in order to regulate The MLC. (That’s not a typo by the way, the MLC styles itself as The MLC.) The comments are starting to be posted by the Copyright Office on the Regulations.gov website. “Comments” in this world are just your suggestions to the Copyright Office about how to make the rule better. We’re going to post a selection of the more interesting comments.
There is still an opportunity to comment on how the Copyright Office is to regulate The MLC’s handling of the “black box” or the “unclaimed” revenue. You can read about it here and also the description of the Copyright Office Unclaimed Royalties Study here. It’s a great thing that the Copyright Office is doing about the black box, but they need your participation!
This comment from Music Reports gives some interesting insights into how The MLC is favoring the NMPA’s formerly wholly-owned Harry Fox Agency (HFA) which has been on the wrong side of most of the licensing debacles. Chris posted some analysis on MediaNet’s comment and criticisms of the HFA-The MLC contract as well as its rather odd timeline as revealed at The Copyright Office roundtables on the next cluster jam, the unclaimed royalties. At least that has the entertainment value of watching them steal in plain site with the Copyright Office drinking game of who will make the excuses for them this time like we don’t notice. We’re not big MRI fans (or MediaNet fans for that matter), but when they’re right, they’re right.
The sad truth is that this entire MLC exercise has become about the rich getting richer from a data land grab for independent songwriters and publishers who have been duped into thinking it’s all for their benefit. It was all so predictable, but nobody listened. This is what they wanted, and now they’ve got it. How about a rule that says if you had your fingerprints on any part of the debacle of the last 20 years, you are immediately disqualified? Bye bye HFA, NMPA, MRI, MediaNet. Unfortunately that is not and never will be the rule because these are the same people who make the rules and are the same people who gave songwriters frozen mechanicals from 1909-1978 and are still freezing the 9.1¢ statutory royalty for fourteen years.
MRI could have done with some editing, but stick with it, they make a lot of sense.]
Read Music Reports entire comment here.
Music Reports generally agrees with, endorses, and echoes the views of MediaNet as stated in the response to the NOI it filed today.
Music Reports also takes note of the MLC’s selection of HFA as a major provider of the capabilities required for its core operations. While the MLC is narrowly limited by the MMA to the principal purpose of administering the blanket license for Section 115-compliant audio-only streaming music services in the United States, and specifically prohibited from storing data about or administering public performance licenses, HFA/SESAC is not so constrained.
On the contrary, HFA/SESAC is free, as a non-regulated, for profit commercial music rights administration service, to administer any type of mechanical licenses. Moreover, SESAC, administers performance rights on a for-profit basis in competition with other PROs. Being hired by the MLC does not change the fact that HFA/SESAC is in competition with other commercial music rights administration services that are not the beneficiaries of a long term, highly-paid contract with the MLC. This is fair enough, so far is it goes.
But as noted above, the boundaries between HFA/SESAC’s database and that which the MLC must build and make publicly available are completely unknown [want to bet that’s because they don’t exist?], as is the timeframe during which the former will substitute for the latter, and whether a proprietary MLC database built independently of HFA’s data will ever be the basis on which the MLC renders royalty distributions.
What is known, however, is that the MLC will enjoy publicity generated by its own statutory mandates (subsidized by the DLC), by the DLC itself, and by the Office, all of whom are authorized and required to devote budgetary allocations to direct publishers’ attention to registering their rights data with the MLC (the database of which is, for the foreseeable future, that of HFA/SESAC). Notwithstanding that the primary purpose of these provisions may be to publicize the existence of the database and of available unclaimed royalties, the consequence will be the direction of resources toward the focus of copyright owners’ attention on just one of several important, pre-existing music rights registries. This is in effect a set of reinforcing government subsidies of which one private enterprise, in competition with other marketplace actors, is the beneficiary.
To the extent HFA/SESAC directly benefits unfairly from a privileged place in the data ecosystem by virtue of this arrangement, the goal of the MMA to create a healthier music rights administration ecosystem will be perversely harmed by the creation of an uneven playing field that penalizes the investments in data made by other services. To be sure, other commercial services are free to compete with HFA to offer services to the MLC and others in the marketplace. But over time, a privileged place in the market’s information flow may distort competition to the determent of copyright owners and their administrators, DMPs, and the public.
Luckily, the Office can prevent this result quite simply by requiring that the MLC provide access to its public database on a competition-neutral basis.
As was noted above, there is an important temporal aspect to the management of music rights data. In order for two administrators to efficiently interoperate, they must be able to have a more or less shared contemporary view of the data about the works they are administering, even if they don’t always agree on every detail.
Therefore, the specific prescription called for here is a combination of the points made in the previous sections above: (a) the Office should use its authority under the MMA to adopt such regulations as it deems necessary to clarify that the public database which the MLC must establish and maintain will be identical to or at least contain the same data as the database on which the MLC will distribute royalties; (b) the MLC should make its public database available contemporaneously with the commencement of its royalty distribution efforts; and (c) the MLC must offer eligible parties bulk, machine-readable access to such data “on a basis that is both comprehensive and as frequent as necessary to efficiently manage the licensing and royalty distribution activities of the mechanical licensing collective itself, and not less than daily access to changed information within a day of any change to such information.”
From the editors at The Trichordist
[The Copyright Office is bravely trying to regulate The MLC to keep the MMA from becoming a feeding frenzy for the data lords. As Chris Castle said in his comment on what should be stamped “Confidential” and kept away from songwriters: “The premise of confidential information under Title I is that there is in rock and roll certain information deserving of government-mandated secrecy.” Or as Otis said, too hot to handle. Keep that in mind–when they say “confidential information” they mean information they can keep away from you.
We are going to excerpt some of the good comments that support independents in the other Copyright Office “rulemaking” consultation that just closed devoted to confidential treatment of data by The MLC and the DLC. You can read them all here.]
The Future of Music Coalition made some great points in their filing, read the whole thing here.
Restrictions on use by MLC and DLC Vendors and Consultants FMC shares concerns expressed by other commenters about the possibility of vendors using confidential data for competitive advantage or purposes beyond what the MLC was created to do. There should be no provision for HFA to use confidential data for “general use”, even on an opt-in basis. The risk of anti-competitive harm is too great.
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