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EU: Monopoly veto means Amazon, Apple get multinational music licenses

By  |  April 15, 2013

Europe’s second-highest court on Friday upheld a European Commission 2008 ruling that required music royalties societies to allow artists to make multinational licenses with companies like Amazon and Apple, which will allow musicians to collect royalties in nations other than their own. The current policy, in which each individual European Union member state has its own collecting society, was vetoed by the European Commission in 2008. Critics of the old system argued that it forced online companies like Apple and Amazon to create many versions of music libraries for each individual country. The companies additionally could not offer international libraries of music. The General Court backed the Commission and ruled hat musicians must now be allowed to choose their collecting society; the ruling will affect 21 of those societies and their umbrella group CISAC, which challenged the Commission’s 2008 ruling.

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