DiMA
Songwriters’ New Streaming Royalties Approved Before the New Year
Arriving just before New Years’ Eve, on Friday (Dec. 30), the Copyright Royalty Board judges issued their ruling on streaming royalty rates for songwriters for the period of January 2023 to December 2027, upholding a settlement proposed by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), Digital Media Association (DiMA), and Nashville Songwriters’ Association International (NSAI) in late August. This ruling sets the rates for Subpart C and D of the five year period known as Phonorecords IV (or “Phono IV” for short), and it represents a compromise between the music industry and the streaming services, creating certainty around the royalties owed to songwriters for U.S. mechanicals. According to the settlement, which the NMPA touts as the “highest rates in the history of digital streaming,...
Publishers, Streamers Reach Deal for Highest Streaming Royalty Rate Ever: Here’s How It Works
Songwriter and publisher U.S. mechanical streaming royalty rates are going up — slowly — to a headline rate of 15.35% of total revenue from 2023-2027. That’s the big news out of Wednesday’s (Aug. 31) joint announcement on the “Phonorecords IV” settlement from the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the Nashville Songwriters Associations International and the Digital Media Association (DiMA). But how long will it take to get there and at what pace? What are the other conditions? Billboard now has more more key details about the deal. Under the new settlement agreement — which the NMPA touts will set the “highest royalty rate in the history of streaming anywhere” — the headline rate will escalate from 15.1% of revenue in 2023 to 15.2% in 2024 and then a half a percentage point inc...
With 100 Million U.S. Subscribers, Streaming Services Declare: ‘We Are Fully Part of This Industry’
The topline stats in the new “Streaming Forward” report from trade group the Digital Media Association (DiMA) are reason enough to sit up and notice. By the end of 2019, there were 99 million active streaming subscribers — procured from 87.5 million paid users — in the U.S. alone. And over the previous two years, paid subs jumped 74.6% and revenue rose 57.7%, fueling optimism for a long-suffering industry and turning streaming services, labels and publishers into hot investments. It’s no wonder Spotify’s stock is soaring and Warner Music Group had a successful IPO in the pandemic’s early days. Streaming has made music hot again. But the 43-page report, conducted by MiDIA Research for DiMA, begs the question on why they would fund such a market research study. ...
