Licensing red tape slows - Telecom Asia
9 June 2006
The music industry has a desperately slow and difficult licensing system. Its getting harder too, as copyright holders try to get as much money as they can to protect themselves against the loss of income from piracy.
The mobile industry is clearly ready for digital music. It remains to be seen whether the music industry is. The music licensing regime arguably isn't. One song comes with a multitude of licenses for performance rights, broadcast, reproduction, etc, and the rights can be held by multiple licensing societies, as well the producers and musicians. For example, the song "Celebration" by Kool And The Gang reportedly has 17 license-holders - all of which must approve a request by, say, Motorola to offer the song on its digital download service.
Moral: make yourself very easy to license and you will get more licensing deals. This is especially beneficial for small artists, since the large artists are the ones bogged down with too much red tape.
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