Music on your blog? You may
need to license it
Website owners could pay from $1,000 to $10,000 a year based on
number of songs.
By Serene Luo - 12 January 2006
The Straits Times
BLOGGERS and personal website owners may soon be pressed to license
the background music that they have on their online journals or
websites.
This was announced by Dr Edmund Lam, chief executive and director
of the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (Compass),
yesterday. He was launching Compass' one-stop centre which will
make licensing musical works for digital distribution easier.
'We increasingly see more bloggers who upload music onto their
webpages,' he said.
'We want to encourage them to come forward to our one-stop centre
to get licensed, for a reasonable fee.'
For websites where the song cannot be downloaded or have any
advertising, owners have to pay $1,000 a year for playing 10 songs
or fewer, $5,000 for playing 11 to 49 songs and $10,000 for over 50
songs.
This is a 'competitive rate', said Mr Melvin Tan, the licensing
manager of Compass, which protects the interests of composers and
lyricists, and administers royalties to them.
Under the law, royalties must be paid on music put on websites too,
even if it is a blog.
While it has not yet sued anyone, Compass will start 'massive
educational efforts' soon, said Dr Lam.
For now, Compass and its partners - eight music publishers,
including Warner/Chappell Music Singapore and Sony Music Publishing
- are targeting the 20 or so content providers such as music
download store Soundbuzz or ringtone download store Max Mobile and
the telcos here.
Formerly, content providers had to discuss separate licensing
agreements with each of the music publishers, record companies and
Compass.
Now, they need only to contact Compass and the record
companies.
The new system also means savings for content providers, which will
now pay 12 per cent of the retail price of the ringtone or music
download instead of 16.25 per cent, said Ms Dulcie Soh, general
manager of BMG Music Publishing Singapore
Online music store Soundbuzz chief executive Sudhanshu Sarronwala
welcomed the move, saying licensing will now be easier
'logistics-wise'.
'It means that instead of dealing with nine companies every year,
we deal with just one, so it should take us just one-ninth the
time,' he said.
'When licensing is easier, more players may come into the
market.'
Similar licensing schemes exist in Hong Kong, Australia and
India.
Japan even has a similar licensing centre which has licensed one
million personal websites that have music streamed on them.
Popular blogger Lee Kin Mun, who writes under the moniker Mr Brown,
is 'not sure this will endear fan bases who like the music so much
they've given you free publicity on their websites to
labels'.
'For most of them, it's mostly for harmless fun,' he said.
'Maybe Compass can give them a students' discount. That may
encourage them not to steal music.'
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