American songwriters and published scored long-fought mechanical royalty rate increase from streaming music platforms. While not every concession was granted, Spotify, Google, Amazon and Pandora are fighting to delay retrospective payments.
According to details disseminated by the Copyright Royalty Board on Friday 1st July, streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and Amazon Music will pay an increased rate to music publishers and songwriters in the US. The proceeding, known as Phonorecords III which covers the 2018-2022 period, involves a 43.8% increase in pre-2018 mechanical royalty rates.
The ruling increases the royalty rate owed by streaming services to 15.1%, up from 10.5% previously for the four-year period. While the rate has increased, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube and Pandora are fighting to maintain the 10.5% rate. Apple has not protested the rate increase.
The ruling requires streaming platforms to increase their mechanical royalty rate for future works, while retroactively paying increased royalties from 2018.
What does this mean for the royalty rate for UK publishers and songwriters? PRS For Music, the UK’s leading royalty distributer, saw a 22.4% increase in revenue in 2021, hitting £777.1m, up 45.6% in 2021 following previous years. Furthermore, they also secured new licensing deals with Disney+, Apple TV and Netflix.
PRS represents over 160,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers who will all receive a distribution of the revenue generated. Overall, this shows that there is an increase in royalty distributions through PRS over the past year.
