12-16-15
The long-awaited rates from the three-person Copyright Royalty Board finally arrived late Wednesday night. In 2016, commercial webcasters will pay 22 cents per performance for any subscription services (such as Pandora One which is $5.00 per month). That’s down from 25 cents per spin. Commercial non-subscription services will pay 17 cents per performance. That’s up from 14 cents for Pandora and down from 25 cents for radio. Noncommercial webcasters will pay $500 for each station or channel that gets up to 159,140 aggregate tuning hours in a month, for each year in the full rate term, which runs through 2020. After 2016 the rates will be adjusted for inflation for the next four years. Spotify and Apple have negotiated direct deals with labels so these new rates do not affect their business.
