Comments on: Screw it, let’s do it

By: Pandora to close in the UK - blog - James Cridland

Pandora to close in the UK - blog - James Cridland — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:06:33 +0000

[...] that they are shuttering their service because they can’t achieve a licence, rather than just doing it anyway. It’s disappointing, but the right ethical thing to do. I’ve met Tim Westergren: [...]

By: links for 2007-06-03 « Zero influence

links for 2007-06-03 « Zero influence — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 00:30:58 +0000

[...] Screw it, let’s do it – blog – James Cridland How Last.fm made the big money. (tags: radio last.fm pirates) [...]

By: Frankie Roberto

Frankie Roberto — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 10:47:30 +0000

I bet there’s umpteen local commercial radio stations doing things with music that haven’t strictly been licensed either. When it comes down to it, you have to either say ‘screw it, let’s do it’, or else you can’t do very much at all.

By: James Cridland

James Cridland — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:51:39 +0000

Normally, I don’t comment to other peoples’ comments: I’ve had my say, after all. However.

I’m aware they’ve had a PRS/MCPS deal for a long while. They don’t have a PPL licence. Being fair to Martin, he pointed that out in the conference.

This blog was concentrating on the record company side, but for those that are confused: PPL=record companies; PRS=writers and performers; MCPS=the record companies’ recording. So the only bit of last.fm’s earlier statement that was incorrect was really the “last.fm is 100% legal”; they weren’t, and as far as I understand it, they still aren’t.

There’s no confusion about whether PPL can issue a blanket licence – they can, across all their repertoire – and whether last.fm can also go direct to the record companies – they can too. Indeed, potentially PPL’s biggest worry is that, with the music industry merging into itself and increasingly being run by EMI/Warners/SonyBMG/AIM, they’re making themselves obsolete.

Finally, MCPS exists for the mechanical rights of a recording. You need an MCPS licence if you rip a CD into iTunes, for example – no, really, you do. The EU copyright directive has made it much more difficult for MCPS, and for a ‘dubbing fee’, to legally justify itself; but that’s for another time.

By: David Jennings

David Jennings — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:27:50 +0000

I don’t want to cast myself as an apologist for Last.fm, but my understanding of their licensing has a slightly different spin to yours.

You write: “last.fm has been trying to get a blanket deal for a long while, but not managed to get the likes of PPL to agree”

I understood that there is some confusion in the UK over who has the rights to license a blanket deal. PPL would like to, but the distributors feel it should be them (and, again as I understand it, the weight of historical precedent is on their side).

“I asked [Martin S]… in 2005 (three years after he launched), what music deals he’d signed. He replied to say he had not signed any deal with the record companies”

But around the same time there was a statement on their site saying “Last.fm is 100% legal, paying a license fee to the MCPS/PRS in the UK, who distribute the license fee to the appropriate labels/artists.” I don’t know whether the first part of that sentence necessarily follows from the second – possibly not, and that may be why it’s not there any more – but it seems that at least one deal had been signed. Just not with a record company, but with a collecting society. I understand that different licenses/deals may apply in the US.

So could it be that Last.fm just exploited the opportunity of an uncertain/immature licensing environment for their kind of service – rather than going for a blatant “ask forgiveness, not permission” tactic. Only asking…