The topic of music royalties has come up time and again in 2009, from the introduction of the Performance Rights Act, currently making its way through Congress, to various digital performance royalty rate disputes, from Internet broadcasts to satellite radio.
To end the year in music royalties and law, and to help open up 2010, on the week of December 21, 2009 the owners of about 1,200 “local” television stations filed a lawsuit against performing rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) seeking “lower broadcast fees to reflect declining television viewership and advertising revenue,” according to a report from music industry news publication Billboard. The suit, WPIX v. BMI, was filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.
The plaintiffs, who have periodically renegotiated the rates with BMI, now state that a federal judge should “set reasonable fees and terms” because of a decline in television viewership and advertising revenue, according to Businessweek. According to the Businessweek article, the “television industry will end the year with lower-than- expected revenue of $15.6 billion, a 22.4 percent decline from 2008.”