The US National Music Publishers’ Association and YouTube have reached an agreement that should solve the issue of unpaid royalties for musical works used in videos played on the video streaming service where ownership was previously unknown.
The statement does not specify how much money will exactly be distributed aside from stating that “millions of dollars in previously unclaimed non-performance royalties will be paid to publishers and songwriters, starting in 2017.” A spokesperson for the NMPA told Music Week that the amount will be “significant” and that “YouTube will administer the claiming process and pay out to the participating publishers”.
Details of the agreement include solutions to identify ownership of musical works and solve the problem of attribution of works by copyright owner. This will allow music publishers and songwriters to be paid not only “for works viewed on YouTube in the past where ownership was previously unknown, but also be paid for those identified works moving forward,” according to a statement from both organisations.
The agreement, according to a summary of supplied by the NMPA, covers the following points:
- Music publishers will have the ability to opt into this agreement during the opt-in period, which opens on December 12, 2016 and will remain open through February 28, 2017.
- Following the opt-in period, YouTube will provide participating publishers with a list of songs YouTube may have been unable to obtain proper ownership information for. This will allow participating publishers to claim ownership in those songs and receive accrued royalties from the period between August 1, 2012 through December 31, 2015.
- The claiming window will be 3 months long. After the claiming window, participating publishers will receive claimed accrued royalties.
- Any accrued royalties that remain unclaimed will be distributed to participating publishers based on each publisher’s market share and on revenue paid for known usage on YouTube during the initial accrual period. The agreement, however, will not affect the rights of any publisher or songwriter who does not choose to participate.
- This process will be repeated for future twelve-month usage periods beginning on January 1, 2016 and ending on December 31, 2019.
The spokesperson for the NMPA said that non-US publishers could opt-in “as long as they have a license or a CIMA [Content Identification & Management Agreement] with YouTube for a reproduction and distribution in the US.”
NMPA President and CEO David Israelite praised the cooperative spirit shown by YouTube in reaching the agreement. “We appreciate YouTube’s willingness to work with us on behalf of the industry to help pay out millions of dollars in previously unclaimed royalties to publishers and songwriters,” said Israelite. “It is essential that we work with digital services like YouTube – the most popular digital platform for music discovery – to fix the challenge of incomplete ownership information to ensure royalties are no longer unmatched and music owners are paid accurately by the platforms that rely on their work.”
Tamara Hrivnak, Head of Music Partnerships, Americas for YouTube and Google Play, added: “The revenue earned by the music industry on YouTube continues to grow significantly year over year, and we’re committed to making sure that publishers are paid for the usage of their works on our platform. We are excited to partner with the NMPA to address the industry-wide challenges associated with identifying publishing ownership on digital platforms.”
