CELAS & Co. – New Actors in Exploiting Digital Music Rights in Europe and the United States

Professor Thomas Hoeren

Abstract

In the wake of EU action in the field of music rights management for digital exploitation, various business models for multi-territorial music rights clearance have been contemplated by market operators. These essentially pertained to the management of copyright, namely the management of the rights held by composers, authors and music publishers, and not the management of the neighbouring rights enjoyed by performers and record producers.

The new licensing channels that have been established for the provision of EU-wide licences and are operational concern specific types of repertoire, primarily the Anglo-American repertoire. This contrasts the previous system of collecting societies’ reciprocal representation, according to which each collecting society could grant access to the entire repertoire of the collecting societies participating in the system on its territory. The new licensing arrangements allow for the provision of mono-repertoire licences for multiple territories. In other words, there is no truly multi-territorial and multi-repertoire system in place. Repertoire fragmentation is one of the principal results of EU action in the field of music rights management.

Many European collecting societies (especially small and medium-sized collecting societies) have criticised these market developments, arguing that they will lead to an over-centralisation of market power and repertoires at the EU level, as well as undesired competition to the detriment of less commercially successful and local repertoires. The argument that their economic sustainability is endangered was also put forward.

Conference Paper (pdf)