Senators Slam Streaming Services’ Request to Defer Payment of Back Royalties, as CRB Ruling Looms (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe negotiations over streaming-service royalties are one of the most complex, contentious and important battlegrounds in the contemporary music industry, pitting some of the world’s largest companies — Amazon, Apple, Google/ Alphabet, Pandora/ SiriusXM/ Liberty Media and upstart Spotify — against music publishers and labels.It’s so contentious that even as the battle over rates for 2023-27 approaches later this year, the rates for 2018-22 still have not been determined: In 2018, the Copyright Royalty Board, which determines rates for publishers but not labels, ruled that streaming services must pay approximately 44% more in publishing royalties.

In 2019, the four streaming services appealed that decision, arguing that they already pay out billions of dollars in royalties and such an increase would make their business models untenable. (Apple, the world’s second-largest streaming service, is sitting out this battle.) They requested that the increase come out of the labels’ share; the three major labels also own the three largest publishers, and needless to say are not interested in voluntarily taking millions of dollars from one business unit and moving it to another instead of collecting more — an unlikely premise that has been called a “heroic assumption” in hearings and documents.

Caught in the middle of all this is the songwriter — the primary creator of the music that is at the center of this battle — who counterintuitively has ended up lowest on the totem pole in the streaming economy.Untold millions of dollars in legal and lobbying fees later, a decision on 2018-22 — officially called Phonorecords III — is expected in the coming days, and according to documents obtained by Variety, it.