CRB sticks by initial ruling on mechanical royalty increase.
In 2018, the Copyright Royalty Board made an important decision regarding songwriters and publishers in the digital age.
Streaming services should raise the mechanical royalty rate from 10.5% to 15.1%. This increase would happen gradually between 2018 and 2022.
However, Spotify, Amazon, Google, and Pandora contested the decision. They argued that increased payments would make their model unsustainable, as they already pay billions in royalties. This lead to a long appeals process that has finally ended.
The CRB announced it will stand by the initial ruling. And there is more good news for songwriters: The CRB is backdating royalties generated in the past five years.
“Now, songwriters and music publishers finally can be made whole and receive the rightful royalty rates from streaming services that they should’ve been paid years ago, ” says National Music Publishers Association president David Israelite. “We will work to ensure that the services quickly backpay copyright owners as they are required by law. As an industry, we move forward united as we press for even fairer rates in the next CRB starting this fall.”
What does this rate increase mean for you?
You stand to earn backdated publishing royalties on any song someone has streamed in the past five years.
With CD Baby Pro Publishing, we’ll make sure you’re paid everything you’re owed.
Also, we’ll keep you posted on future developments in this space, as the Copyright Royalty Board will soon make a decision on rates for 2023-27.
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.