On September 18, 2018, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Music Modernization Act, an important piece of legislation aimed at updating music copyright laws for the digital era.
Frank Scibilia, Co-Chair of Pryor Cashman's Digital Media Group, spoke to Hypebot about the legal significance of the Act and what it means for the music industry:
"The Music Modernization Act is an historic achievement," he said. "As part of an unprecedented compromise between music creators and rights owners on the one hand and digital services on the other, the services now have a means by which they may easily obtain the requisite mechanical licenses for interactive streaming on a blanket basis and thereby avoid the risk of streaming music without proper licenses, and royalties that had previously gone unpaid will now find their way to creators and rights owners."
Scibilia added, "a quirk in the law has been eliminated so that the great legacy artists that provide so much value to satellite radio and similar services will now be compensated for such services' use of their recordings in the same manner as current artists. And the standard applicable to the Copyright Royalty Board's determination of rates for section 115 licenses for musical works has now been changed to the 'willing-buyer-willing-seller standard,' which is both a market-based standard and consistent with the standard applicable to the Board's determination of rates for section 114 licenses for sound recordings."
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