Songwriters score delayed win in streaming royalties battle

Songwriters earned a stalled victory Friday in their ongoing battle for higher streaming royalty pay.

After a lengthy appeal from a handful of digital powerhouses, the Copyright Royalty Board upheld a nearly 44% bump in streaming royalties for songwriters. The ruling increases streaming rates from 10.5% to 15.1% for a four-year period stretching 2018 to 2022, according to trade groups the National Music Publishers' Association and Nashville Songwriters Association International.

The board initially ruled in favor of an increase in 2018, but leading music streaming companies Spotify, Amazon Music, Google-YouTube and Pandora pushed back against the decision via the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2019. Apple Music did not appeal the ruling.

"Today the court reaffirmed the headline rate increase we earned four long years ago, confirming that songwriters need and deserve a significant raise from the digital streaming services who profit from their work," National Music Publishers' Association president and CEO David Israelite said in a statement.

He added: “This process was protracted and expensive and though we are relieved with the outcome, years of litigation to uphold a rate increase we spent years fighting for is a broken system. Now, songwriters and music publishers finally can be made whole and receive the rightful royalty rates from streaming services that they should've been paid years ago."

Still, it may be months before songwriters see retroactive royalty checks cut from streaming services. Nashville Songwriters Association International executive director Bart Herbison described the outcome as "mixed news" in a statement Friday afternoon.

Per a finalized verdict, streaming services should pay backlogged royalties to songwriters in six months, but an exact timeline remains to-be-determined as the companies look for an extension, according to Herbison.

"It is unbelievable that these tech companies who pay a myriad of rates across the globe have not figured this out when they realized four-and-a-half years ago they would have to," he said.

“More and more songwriters continue to leave the business. Some may have been able to hold on had the streaming companies not appealed, Herbison said. "We do not want to see anyone else leave because arrearage payments cannot get to them in time."

A statement from streaming service advocacy group Digital Media Association said that "streaming services are committed to working .. to facilitate the accurate distribution of royalties."

And in a win for streaming services, the board ruled to cap the percentage of label revenue and adopt bundle package definitions — such as cross-content subscriptions and family plans — that favor the companies.

“Looking ahead, streaming services believe it’s time for all stakeholders—labels, publishers, writers, artists and the services—to engage in comprehensive discussions to figure out the right royalty-sharing balance going forward," said the statement from Digital Media Association.

A trial to determine rates for 2023-2027 begins later this year.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Songwriters earn win in ongoing battle for streaming royalty raise