A Study Of The U.S. Music Copyright Licensing System

Throughout the history of the U.S.music licensing system,the renewal of music distribution technology has been an important motivation for the system’s change.With the advent of digital distribution technology,the music industry began to modernize.The expression of musical works has shifted from tangible to intangible,with faster and broader distribution,and music streaming platforms have become the new mainstay of the industry......All these changes have brought many new challenges to the music copyright licensing system: first,the uneven distribution of copyright licensing benefits.License fees have risen with the development of the market,but the proportion of benefit distribution is seriously unbalanced,and the conflicts between various subjects are intensifying.Second,the failure of the statutory licensing system.Permit rate standards are seriously lower than the market level,the application process is cumbersome to affect the efficiency of the permit.Third,the lack of a unified database has increased the transaction costs of music copyright licensing.Under the heavy challenges,the U.S.Congress enacted the Music Modernization Act in 2018 to reform the system from four aspects: first,to ease the conflict of interests among licensing subjects.Innovative allocation mechanisms are used to clarify the rights of producers and recording artists to receive benefit distribution and to incentivize music creation.Determine the jurisdictional court and fixed licensing rate judge system.Second,adjust the statutory license fee rate standard,and determine the "buyer and seller will standard".Third,establish a new collective management organization for mechanical licenses.Fourth,the establishment of a comprehensive music copyright information database to improve licensing efficiency.These groundbreaking innovations have made important contributions to the modernization of the music copyright licensing system.Unfortunately,however,there are still certain shortcomings in the institutional design of the Act: the scope of application of the copyright information database does not extend to the field of public performance rights,the licensing fee standard still has a gap with the market,and the newly established collective management organizations may conflict with existing collective management organizations.There are many similarities between China’s music copyright licensing system and the United States.These include royalty standards do not conform to market laws,difficulties in the application of statutory license fees,and low efficiency of collective management organizations.These problems limit the transformation and upgrading of my country’s music industry.It is necessary to break the predicament faced by the current system and realize the improvement of the quality and efficiency of the music industry.Based on my country’s industrial practice,we can learn from the industrial legislation ideas of the "Music Modernization Act" in the United States and adopt innovative reform plans in it to provide a new path for my country’s music licensing system: First,reform the licensing rate system.The unified pricing by the government is abolished,the standard of "will of buyers and sellers" is adopted,and the price that may be achieved in real transactions in the market is used as a reference,to be more in line with the development law of the market.The second is to improve the licensing fee dispute resolution mechanism.Set up pre-negotiation,improve post-event relief,and achieve full-process coverage.The third is to improve the statutory licensing system.On the premise of retaining the statutory license,delete the "proviso" clause,adopt a blanket license,and extend it to the field of digital audio transmission.Fourth,establish a copyright information database.Led by the Music Authors Association,the music platform,record companies,and other entities jointly create a music copyright information database to realize the comprehensiveness and transparency of music copyright information.Fifth,optimize the collective management organization,strengthen internal and external supervision,set up a periodic evaluation mechanism,and improve the efficiency of copyright management.