Recently, on December 12, 2023, the Copyright Royalty Judges announced a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increase in the mechanical royalty rates for the 17 U.S.C. §115 statutory license for making and distributing phonorecords of nondramatic musical works regarding physical phonorecords and Permanent Downloads. The new rate is 12.40 cents per reproduction or 2.39 cents per [...]
What songwriters can do to protect their ideas when submitting demo tapes to publishers Every songwriter has heard the words "sorry, we’re not accepting unsolicited material" from at least a dozen publishers. In fact, in a recent informal survey conducted by Law On the Row, two-thirds of the thirty publishing companies contacted indicated that they [...]
On Monday, January 28th, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) began what will be four weeks of hearings. The CRB will hear testimony from interested parties on both sides of issues which will ultimately determine the statutory mechanical rates for songwriters and music publishers. The CRB sets these rates periodically, but these particular hearings are more [...]
Once a music publisher begins to receive income from the exploitation of the copyrights it has acquired, it must begin to distribute the income to the appropriate writers. Understanding the basic principles of copyright ownership and royalty splits is fundamental to performing the task of distribution of income. One device that is often used to [...]
