Soundcloud - and rights issues

[paulears]

I got a note today saying PRS are taking legal action against Soundcloud.

 

Dear Member,

 

PRS for Music begins legal action against SoundCloud

 

 

After careful consideration, and following five years of unsuccessful negotiations, we now find ourselves in a situation where we have no alternative but to commence legal proceedings against the online music service SoundCloud.

 

When a writer or publisher becomes a member of the Performing Right Society, they assign certain rights to their works over for us to administer, so it’s our job to ensure we collect and distribute royalties due to them. SoundCloud actively promotes and shares music. Launched in 2008, the service now has more than 175m unique listeners per month. Unfortunately, the organisation continues to deny it needs a PRS for Music licence for its existing service available in the UK and Europe, meaning it is not remunerating our members when their music is streamed by the SoundCloud platform.

 

Our aim is always to license services when they use our members’ music. It has been a difficult decision to begin legal action against SoundCloud but one we firmly believe is in the best, long-term interests of our membership. This is because it is important we establish the principle that a licence is required when services make available music to users. We have asked SoundCloud numerous times to recognise their responsibilities to take a licence to stop the infringement of our members’ copyrights but so far our requests have not been met. Therefore we now have no choice but to pursue the issue through the courts.

 

We understand SoundCloud has taken down some of our members’ works from their service. With our letter of claim, we sent SoundCloud a list of 4,500 musical works which are being made available on the service, as a sample of our repertoire being used, so that they understood the scale of our members’ repertoire and its use on the service. We asked them to take a licence to cover the use of all our members’ repertoire or otherwise stop infringing.

 

SoundCloud decided to respond to our claim by informing us that it had removed 250 posts. Unfortunately, we have no visibility or clarity on SoundCloud’s approach to removing works, so it is not currently clear why these particular posts have been selected by them given the wider issue of infringement that is occurring. Ultimately, it is SoundCloud’s decision as to whether it starts paying for the ongoing use of our members’ music or stops using these works entirely.

 

If the streaming market is to reach its true potential and offer a fair return for our members, organisations such as SoundCloud must pay for their use of our members’ music. We launched our Streamfair campaign in June to raise awareness of this issue and highlight how music creators need to be properly remunerated from streaming. We believe that all digital services should obtain a licence which grants them permission to use our members’ music and repertoire, in this case the works of songwriters, publishers and composers.

 

The streaming market cannot fairly develop unless this happens. We have always been pro-licensing and pro-actively work with organisations in order to propose an appropriate licensing solution for the use of our members’ works.

 

We remain hopeful that this matter can be resolved without the need for extended litigation. Members will appreciate that this is now a legal matter and our ability to communicate around it is therefore limited by the legal process. However, we will try to share information and updates whenever we can.

[sleah]

Interesting.

My involvement in our local community radio made me wonder - AFAIK if we want to make a programme (that contains commercial music) available to 'Listen Again' via the station's website by either uploading the show directly to our site or via a hosting site such as that offered by the Community Media Association who provide our 'Listen Live' service, then we need an appropriate license.

However, if we upload the show to SoundCloud and simply place a link on our website, then it costs us nothing in terms of additional licensing???

At least that's how I understand it!

I may have understood that wrong of course. That said however, as a private individual, if I create a 'DJ' mix and upload it to my personal website I need a license, but if I upload to SoundCloud I don't.

Both examples suggest SoundCloud has the appropriate licenses in place, which evidently they do not!

 

For once, I think I agree with the PRS!!!

[paulears]

I don't think that's quite what they are saying. They want sound cloud to pay for the music it streams when that music belongs to their members. In your case, putting music on sound cloud for listen again should be something you pay for like you do when it goes out live. Soundcloud don't check the music they make available, Prs think they should.

[Solstace]

It's an interesting case. I have mixed feelings - there are some users out there blatantly reposting and ripping-off PRS stuff, and PRS rightly should challenge that. On the other hand, there are many PRS-registered artists out there participating within the community who have willingly put their own material up, whether before or after PRS registration, as part of said community participation. I wonder how that works in the eyes of PRS?

 

If this case isn't handled carefully, I fear they'll end up ripping the heart out of Soundcloud for the sake of chasing some (realistically very limited) coin. No, copyrighted material isn't the beating heart of Soundcloud - and it never has been in my experience. But the conditions that will likely be imposed for Soundcloud's continued operation, if courts find (perhaps rightly) in PRS' favour, could well result its ultimate destruction - which would be a great loss.

[sleah]

That makes sense Paul.

 

In a way, Soundcloud are almost being singled out. Is it the case, which I've traditionally thought it would be, that using my example of the DJ'mixtape' that the mechanics of how it is shared online, be it own website, own server or a 3rd party hosting service is actually irrelevant?

I come from the time when there was NO way to share a copyright recording with a stranger without a license of some kind, whether that was giving a copy, playing it in public or broadcasting over radio. The major difference now is on-demand services. Or is it? Is on-demand really much difference to the Juke Box in a pub, for which a license is payable?

 

The concept of a service provider being able to pay a fee to make available copyright material which they didn't purchase and is provided by users of the service has thrown a spanner in the licensing works from what I can see.

 

I'm sure it would easier to return to the old system where whoever wants to share copyright material pays the fees regardless of how they do it. Either that or the whole concept of copyright and licensing needs looking at, rather than the somewhat "pick'n'mix" system we seem to have now.

[dbuckley]

copyrighted material isn't the beating heart of Soundcloud - and it never has been...

 

Exactly. PRS's actions could end up killing the golden egg that is the launchpad of many of their clients careers. PRS seems prepared to take this gamble.

[paulears]

I'm pretty much in favour of copyright control, but have to admit that soundcloud never popped out at me as being relevant. I often use it to make clips and weird stuff available, and get directed to it to listen to people's own stuff. I didn't know people used it like spotify, which I pay for?

[azlan]

I suspect the issue is that a lot of dj's use soundcloud as a host for example sets (made up of other tracks, some of which are probably covered by prs), or for bootleg remixes of existing tracks. Soundcloud already does takedowns of tracks if a copyright complaint is recieved.

[Just Some Bloke]

When I first used Soundcloud I didn't realise how it worked and put one track on that was off a CD and it was immediately taken down. I learnt my lesson and now only use it for my own recordings.

[richardash1981]

When I first used Soundcloud I didn't realise how it worked and put one track on that was off a CD and it was immediately taken down. I learnt my lesson and now only use it for my own recordings.

There is an added complexity because of the separation of performance copyright and composer's right of public performance. Most of this discussion seems to have focused on commercial recordings, but PRS's remit is actually to look after the composers and arrangers of the music, not the performers. So their grief is that people are performing compositions for which there is extant composer's copyright (which runs 75 years from the composer's death), and putting their own performances up on Soundcloud. The logic is that this deprives composers and arrangers of income, quite independent of the performer's position.

The effective situation is that there is very little written in the last 100 years that can be performed and uploaded to Soundcloud legitimately, unless you are the original composer of the music (and so own the rights).

 

I have no idea how much of Sound cloud's content fall foul of the PRS issue - most of what I follow on there is traditional folk, classical from out-of-copyright scores, or from composer's accounts - who presumably don't wish to sue themselves. But I see a lot of links to performances of new works by living composers which are obviously there to promote the performer, and probably don't have the composer's right of public performance.

 

MixCloud is different, as they carefully collect track info and use it to make payments to track owners, funded by advertising on the site. This is probably a better home for radio / DJ Mix content, and still free for end users to listen.

 

There is a potential problem (I would welcome feedback from those involved) in that it seems very hard in the UK to opt out of paying for right of public performance via PRS (at their rates), even if you have agreement with the composer or the composer is not getting any income from PRS for your payments.Thus is may be very hard for someone who has the composer's blessing to use a performance to prove this to PRS.