Motorola's Deal with UMG
Motorola recently announced that they're licensing UMG's catalog for their iRadio service, which will launch in Q1. iRadio is a time-shifted radio service they plan on rolling out via operators, and claim to have one lined up for their launch. What's interesting here is that they did a deal at all. iRadio was supposed to have DRM such that it would be compliant with the song-complement rules of the webcasting license provided by the DMCA. Either Motorola was convinced that they needed a direct license because they're service falls outside the statutory one and/or the service will have things like interactivity that require a direct license. The statutory rate is typically a floor so they're likely paying a higher rate than the CARP rates that statutory webcasting services pay. Still, there ought to be plenty of revenue to go around at $7 / mo, and there will need to be for the operator to get their fair share and for the labels and songwriters to be paid for content.
- Posted by Rags Gupta posted at 2005-10-06 05:41
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