EU-Parliament: Online-Music Licensing

On 9 July 2013, The EU-Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has unanimously adopted a Report on a proposal for a Directive "on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses in the internal market". Under the rules approved the Legal Affairs Committee, online music service providers will get licenses more easily and musicians will receive royalties more quickly, enabling consumers to enjoy a wider range of music online.

The proposal backed by all legal affairs MEPs aims to make it easier for service providers to obtain licenses for online music services. It also seeks to improve protection of authors’ rights by making sure that royalties are collected more efficiently from service providers and distributed to artists more fairly and more quickly.

Encouraging New and Better Online Music Services

This should encourage the creation of new EU-wide online music services and help boost sales. In future, instead of having to deal with authors' collective management organisations in each EU member states, service providers could obtain licenses from a small number of such organisations operating across EU borders.

MEPs passed an amendment to ensure that smaller and less popular repertoires also have access to the market by requiring these collecting organisations to issue licenses under the same conditions for all repertoires.

Proper and Timely Remuneration to Artists

MEPs amended the EU-Commission proposal to ensure that rightholders receive their royalties more quickly, by cutting the deadline for paying them from 12 to three months from the end of the financial year in which the right revenue was collected.

Another amendment by MEPs gives authors and artists better control over the management of their rights. The rules will ensure that artists will have the freedom to choose the collecting society and that they can participate more easily in the decision-making process.

Next Steps

The report was adopted by Legal Affairs Committee by 22 votes to 0, with 0 abstentions. The committee negotiators received a mandate to start negotiations with EU ministers.

The Committee on Legal Affairs was chaired by Klaus-Heiner Lehne (EPP, DE). Rapporteur was Marielle Gallo (EPP, FR). The procedure is the ordinary legislative procedure (codecision).

Report of 9 July 2013 by the Committe on Legal Affairs "on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses in the internal market (COM(2012)0372 – C7-0183/2012 – 2012/0180(COD))" REF. : 20130708IPR16829