CPB extends SoundExchange agreement, PRX included

Jake posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | Blog, PRX in the News

Good news in the often contentious area of webcasting royalties – at least as far as public radio is considered. CPB and SoundExchange have reached agreement that extends the recently-announced two-year deal to a multi-year arrangement through 2015.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – SoundExchange, the non-profit performance rights organization, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) are proud to announce an agreement to govern royalty rates for webcasting through 2015. The agreement would allow CPB qualified stations, NPR member stations and NFCB participant member stations (along with NPR, American Public Media, Public Radio International and the Public Radio Exchange) to pay an alternate rate of royalties to artists and copyright owners whose recordings they stream over the Internet.

We’re grateful to CPB, the Station Resource Group, and others from public radio who helped work through the negotiations. As an open web-based distribution service for public radio PRX with tens of thousands of audio works often containing music, PRX is one of the more interesting examples of “webcasting” and we’re very sensitive to the need to balance the interests of rights holders, users, and new intermediaries like ourselves. With this agreement in hand for a solid span of the next 6 years we can start to plan some more innovative services using the PRX platform and our growing catalog of music-based and spoken word works.

Tags: cpb, royalties, soundexchange, webcasting

2 Comments to CPB extends SoundExchange agreement, PRX included

Patrick Hoyt
August 12, 2009

Call me dense, but does this mean that stations will be paying on a per-song basis, or will be covered under a single blanket payment made by CPB on our behalf, like the retroactive agreement they made before?

Jake Shapiro
August 12, 2009

Thanks Patrick, copyright royalties is by far one of the most confusing areas so all questions are welcome.

This CPB agreement is a blanket license that CPB pays, just like the retroactive ones in the past, but with one important difference which is that the reporting requirements have changed and Public Interactive will now be working with stations to do a more thorough job of capturing info about what songs are playing when.

Cheers
Jake

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