Who Owns That Song?

The music industry are committing to build a song rights registry which will help it develop and work with new online music services and also fight piracy. It’s a bit of a no brainer that an industry that is fundamentally built on trading rights needs a registry.

It not good enough to ‘Shazam’ a song, we also need to know who own which rights to it. One of the biggest problems today is simple, people don’t know who to pay.To ensure that the rights owners get paid each time it is played the rights information must be easily accessible. The problem is not simple as several writers on a song may be signed to different music publishers and a single licensing agreement may not be enough. UK rights laws also require music publishers to obtain licenses for almost all platforms and they may have to enter into licensing agreements with all these platforms each time they make new offerings.

Global consultants Deloitte will be working with key industry players such as EMI and online music stores such as iTunes and Amazon who also support it. They estimate that the global repertoire database could be live within two years and will hold details on rights and all parties involved in the individual works. A similar scheme is being considered for the recorded music business. If a service operates in different countries it would also have to agree terms with the royalty collection societies of each country it operates in.

The industry estimates that just by simplifying the current system, around £130 million could be saved in copyright administration fees and returned to song writers each year.

Many say that books should learn from other media sectors and their digital journeys. The one thing that is common is the need for industry authoritative rights registries. The book business however appears to be frozen in the digital headlights and awaiting the Google Book Settlement, in hope that it will bail it out. The reality is that today it appears to lack the collective vision and commitment to address this Achilles rights heel and create a rights registry.

A Rights Business With No Rights Registry

Many see digital as opening up new opportunities one of which is to identify those old best sellers that have gone out of print and get then back on the shelf. Obviously it would be good to get them on the digital shelf as ebooks and with a relatively low investment they can be up and available competing with everyone else again. Once out there, there is little need to do anything except collect whatever sales revenues occur. The other option is to make them available once again in a physical POD (print on demand) rendition. Again once set up, POD is just a case of collecting the money from the sales, on a book that may never go out of print, needs no marketing spend and may never get its rights reverted.

In somewhat a roundabout way this is where Google came in and is what the, still unsettled, book settlement is about. The problem was never those new works under new contracts that allowed them to go digital, nor those that had slipped into public domain and no longer were tethered to anyone. It was always about orphans and many of this were not completely parentless, but just lying dormant and ‘out of print’. To all those wishing to adopt orphans, ‘out of print’ now offers relatively cheap digital pickings.

Many dispute the orphan numbers and debate numbers and not ethics. Some will assume rights and adopt a ‘publish and be dammed‘ approach always willing to admit an error when found out, but too lazy to do the diligence to establish the facts first.
We write this not as a piece of theory, but as a result of establishing books that were sucked into a trade publishing programme improperly. Some will basically trawl their best sellers that are out of print and readopt them without the appropriate diligence.

So again we ask how publishing is to manage rights in a digital world when it has no registry? How do authors and estates protect themselves from digital tethering and how can authors effectively monitor the situation?

Healy to Head Google Settlement Book Registry

So what did we learn today at the London Book Fair?

First the news that appears to be circulating that our ex pat from the UK, Michael Healy of BISG, is to head up the Book Bank Registry. Sounds a good move for Michael, who certainly knows the issues and understands the challenges. We presume the job presume is dependant on a green light in June and wish him well.

Why would we do that if we oppose the settlement you ask?

Well, whether it happens or not we hope the BRR happens. The industry needs it and a rights business with no registry is questionable.

The other interesting insight is just how many people we speak to today are only partially aware of the settlement and its potential impact. They appear to be talking more about articles they have read in the broadsheets than coverage in the trade.
The debate is at last starting and we hope not too late.