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News |  18 Jul 2008 12:00 |  By RnMTeam

EU amends music licensing regulations

MUMBAI: To facilitate easy online downloads, The European Commission ordered the music copyright groups to block a system creating hurdles to buy licensed music online.

Compared to US, internet music downloads in Europe is lagging behind pulling in just a fraction of revenues the record industry is losing from falling CD sales.

The main cause being the licensing system differs in Europe and music rights are sold separately in each country making it liable to seek licenses from each EU member state. This has prevented Apple's iTunes from setting up a single store from which it can service all of Europe. This move comes as a relief to iTunes' rollout across Europe.The European Commission further ordered the music copyright groups to end a system of contracts that allow artists to collect payments only from an agency based in their own country.

The change also facilitates users to get EU-wide broadcast licenses for the Internet, cable television and satellite for several countries by using just one collecting society of their choice, the EU said.

The European Commission started investigating CISAC's agreements after complaints from satellite broadcaster RTL and British digital music provider Music Choice. Recently, the EU executive found 24 European collecting societies guilty of breaking EU antitrust rules, but did not impose any fines. The collecting societies are members of CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors of Composers.

An EU spokesman Jonathan Todd commented, ending all the above amendments will not affect the amount of royalties artists' received or the range of music available for sale.

However, there is an outcry from the European composers stating, selling music rights EU-wide might reduce the royalties they depend on.

A group of musicians including the Bee Gees' Robin Gibb, Abba's Benny Anderson, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Paul McCartney, Maurice Jarre and Mark Knopfler are of the opinion that more competition would hurt smaller collecting agencies and less well-known musicians.

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