iTunes Store willing, if not ready, to go Europe-wide

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 05:41

Business IT - Technology

This situation had been made worse by various publishers withdrawing rights from the collecting societies, as the latter are no longer able to offer 'blanket licences' covering all the rights needed by a digital music seller such as the iTunes Store. Instead, it requires "a myriad of different licenses from different licensors."

Apple suggested a system where performing and mechanical rights always go hand in glove (that is, performing rights agencies would be also able to license mechanical rights, and vice versa), and where publishers cannot refuse to licence their rights to collecting societies.

At the followup meeting, Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet services, restated the company's position that the difficulties in obtaining rights for each country are a major obstacle to providing pan-EU access to online music services. There are too many parties to negotiations, and not enough information about who owns which rights.

Being able to license a global repertoire - even if that licence is limited to a particular territory - is more important than the availability of multi-territory licences to subsets of the global repertoire, he said.

But SACEM's Miyet warned that a system that put the various rights managers in competition with each other could lead to a "race to the bottom" to the detriment of rightsholders.

According to the report, iTunes would agree to making its content available to all European consumers, including those in countries where the iTunes Store does not currently operate, if multi-territory licences were readily available along with a shared database of rights ownership.

It seems likely that other online music retailers would follow suit.