Music on your blog? You may need to license it
Website owners could pay from $1,000 to $10,000 a year based on number of songs.
By Serene Luo - 12 January 2006
The Straits Times
BLOGGERS and personal website owners may soon be pressed to license the background music that they have on their online journals or websites.
This was announced by Dr Edmund Lam, chief executive and director of the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (Compass), yesterday. He was launching Compass' one-stop centre which will make licensing musical works for digital distribution easier.
'We increasingly see more bloggers who upload music onto their webpages,' he said.
'We want to encourage them to come forward to our one-stop centre to get licensed, for a reasonable fee.'
For websites where the song cannot be downloaded or have any advertising, owners have to pay $1,000 a year for playing 10 songs or fewer, $5,000 for playing 11 to 49 songs and $10,000 for over 50 songs.
This is a 'competitive rate', said Mr Melvin Tan, the licensing manager of Compass, which protects the interests of composers and lyricists, and administers royalties to them.
Under the law, royalties must be paid on music put on websites too, even if it is a blog.
While it has not yet sued anyone, Compass will start 'massive educational efforts' soon, said Dr Lam.
For now, Compass and its partners - eight music publishers, including Warner/Chappell Music Singapore and Sony Music Publishing - are targeting the 20 or so content providers such as music download store Soundbuzz or ringtone download store Max Mobile and the telcos here.
Formerly, content providers had to discuss separate licensing agreements with each of the music publishers, record companies and Compass.
Now, they need only to contact Compass and the record companies.
The new system also means savings for content providers, which will now pay 12 per cent of the retail price of the ringtone or music download instead of 16.25 per cent, said Ms Dulcie Soh, general manager of BMG Music Publishing Singapore
Online music store Soundbuzz chief executive Sudhanshu Sarronwala welcomed the move, saying licensing will now be easier 'logistics-wise'.
'It means that instead of dealing with nine companies every year, we deal with just one, so it should take us just one-ninth the time,' he said.
'When licensing is easier, more players may come into the market.'
Similar licensing schemes exist in Hong Kong, Australia and India.
Japan even has a similar licensing centre which has licensed one million personal websites that have music streamed on them.
Popular blogger Lee Kin Mun, who writes under the moniker Mr Brown, is 'not sure this will endear fan bases who like the music so much they've given you free publicity on their websites to labels'.
'For most of them, it's mostly for harmless fun,' he said.
'Maybe Compass can give them a students' discount. That may encourage them not to steal music.'
serl@sph.com.sg