Has The Time Come For A New Collection Society?

Performance royalty collection societies like BMI and ASCAP have been around almost a hundred years (in the case of ASCAP), and while they've been essential to the well-being of the songwriter and publisher, some wonder whether they're a product of another time that hasn't quite kept up with our Music 3.0 age.

For one thing, in our new streaming world, some publishers and record labels feel they can do the job better than these companies, and have made their own deals with Internet broadcasters, something that would have been unthinkable even 5 years ago.

Now it seems that a new collection organization in Germany may show the way for other territories.

Currently GEMA is the equivalent of BMI or ASCAP in Germany, but the new Cultural Commons Collecting Society (also known as C3S) began in 2010 especially for musicians and songwriters that did not wish to be represented by GEMA. The company is now in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign to raise the necessary funds to go head to head with the big dog of the marketplace, and already has close to 500 supporters.

I'm not sure that C3S can make a dent in GEMA, given that it doesn't have the deep pockets required to be a player (at least at the moment), but it does exhibit an emotion that many are feeling; that it's time for something new and fresh.

We'll check back from time to time to see if C3S is gaining traction. If it does, you can bet that execs and songwriters in other parts of the world will be watching.

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YouTube Loses A Major Music Battle

I always like to keep up with what's happening on the legal front of the online music business all over the world, and here's a potential blockbuster. A court in Hamburg, Germany recently ruled that YouTube is responsible for the content that users post on the site after the German music royalty collection service Gema filed suit.

Basically Gema stated that YouTube hasn't done enough to stop copyrighted clips from being posted and wanted YouTube to install filters to protect its 60,000 members. The case was only over 12 videos, but the ramifications are severe in that YouTube may be forced to pay a huge royalty bill on every video that contains copyrighted music as a result.

What YouTube is really afraid of is that this one ruling can snowball into different areas other than Germany. As if that wasn't bad enough, if the film and television industries also took up the cause, it could really mean that the service could not survive. Read those last words again - in its most severe form, YouTube could be taken completely off the air. Gone.

In the US, YouTube still enjoys the protection of a ruling that basically says "we're not responsible because we didn't post it." The problem is that once a precedent is set in one territory, you never know what might happen elsewhere.

There's some interesting gamesmanship that's going on in relation to this case. Gema's been asking for royalties for some time, so in 2009 YouTube basically blocked all the videos from all German record labels for a brief time in retaliation. Gema also obtained a ruling against the file sharing site Rapidshare where the judgement required it to be more proactive when in hunting for pirated content. Then Grooveshark pulled out of Germany because the licensing rates made it impossible for them to be profitable.

This could end up being a big problem not only for YouTube, but for all video sites. Watch this one closely as it unfolds.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.