BigChampagne's Ultimate Chart (a/o February 10th):
1. “What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger),” Kelly Clarkson
2. “Set Fire to the Rain,” Adele
3. “Turn Me On,” David Guetta
4. “Rack City,” TYGA
5. “Good Feeling,” Flo Rida
6. “Smooth Criminal (Glee Cast Version),” Glee Cast
7. “Young, Wild & Free,” Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa
8. “Domino ,” Jessie J
9. “Sexy and I Know It,” LMFAO
10. “Ass Back Home ,” Gym Class Heroes
Major labels and the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) recently forged an agreement to pay a huge pile of unmatched royalty obligations. Those mechanical royalties have confusing or undetermined ownership structures, and represent a value of roughly $300 million, according to estimates shared by the NMPA.
Sounds like progress, and good news for those awaiting proper royalty compensation. But in the wake of plan details disclosed by NMPA head David Israelite, a number of players are pointing to a deal structure that largely fattens the pockets of bigger, more established publishers, not the actual owners or writers of the content in question. In fact, a huge tranche of $174 million, accrued between 2000-7, is merely being distributed based on market share figures, calculated from those previously paid.
Perhaps that represents the only reasonable approach from a logistical standpoint. But others beg to differ, and efforts are now underway to create a centralized rights ownership database, something this industry sorely lacks.
The latest initiative comes from the Digital Media Association (DiMA), a DC-based consortium whose members include Apple, RealNetworks, and Pandora. That group has suffered against confusing and shifting royalty requirements, an environment that creates huge administrative costs and frustrates financial forecasting efforts. But according to documents shared with Digital Music News late Tuesday evening, DiMA is now circulating a proposal to create a centralized database of rights owners.
The draft proposal (dated October 19th) notes that "there is no single document, catalog or user-friendly searchable database tool available to [the] industry," and asserts that a "collaborative approach on this project will be of broad benefit to all stakeholders, including songwriters, publishers, artists, recording companies and digital services." Based on the document, it remains unclear which companies or individuals are participating in the effort, or what deadlines are attached to the RFP (request for proposal), though DiMA may offer more information on Wednesday.
Separately, established experts in the space continue to point to a solvable mess. In a confidential conversation with Digital Music News this week, one well-known executive questioned why a broadly collaborative process could not be used to match compositions to their rightful owners. "Facebook routinely collects phone numbers and emails, the tools exist to do this," the executive relayed, while suggesting an alternative, wiki-like approach to the 'pending and unmatched' mess. Indeed, companies like Music Reports Incorporated (MRI) and Rightsflow seem well-equipped to solve this issue, and a number of other entrepreneurs and companies (including BMI) have also considered similar solutions.
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