Radio station victorious in case against music rights holder

A court has ruled that a US Internet radio station is free to licence songs belonging to a music rights organisation.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has been told it cannot prevent Pandora Media (Pandora) from licensing songs in its catalogue.

In a summary judgement issued at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 17, ASCAP was told it had an obligation under a consent decree which says that it must license songs to any service that asks.

Making her ruling, Judge Denise Cote wrote, “Pandora argues that the antitrust consent decree under which ASCAP operates requires ASCAP to license Pandora to perform for five years all of the works in the ASCAP repertory as of January 1, 2011.”

Cote added that the decree "unambiguously" covers all ASCAP’s works from 2011 to 2015.

The ruling comes prior to a larger rate-setting trial between the pair, which is due to begin on Dec. 4.

In a statement, ASCAP chief executive John LoFrumento said the summary judgement had no impact on the impending trial.

"ASCAP's more than 470,000 songwriter, composer and music publisher members make their living creating the music without which Pandora would have no business,” he said.

“ASCAP looks forward to the December 4 trial, where it will demonstrate the true value of songwriters’ and composers’ performance rights, a value that Pandora’s music streaming competitors have recognised by negotiating rather than litigating with creators of music."

Christopher Harrison, Pandora’s assistant general counsel, said, “We hope this will put an end to the attempt by certain ASCAP-member publishers to unfairly and selectively withhold their catalogues from Pandora.”

“This decision shakes up the digital music licensing arena,” said Ross Charap, partner at Arent Fox LLP in New York. “Essentially, big publishers led by Sony/EMI have withdrawn their catalogues from ASCAP for the purpose of licensing their digital performing rights to digital music services directly.

“The court ruled that ASCAP couldn’t let the publishers do that under the ASCAP consent decree.”

ASCAP has more than 400,000 members, and represents music from artists such as Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Katy Perry.

Pandora, based in Oakland, California, has more than 70 million regular users online.