Where is the Public Interest in Business-to-Business Licensing?

At the end of June I spoke at the 19^th Biennial IASPM Conference in Kassel, Germany. My main theme was blanket licensing and how it is under threat: some artists are refusing to licence their songs to streaming services; some publishers are withdrawing their repertoire from broadcast licensing; and Blockchain technology has been proposed as a means of individually licensing the use of music in venues, shops, hotels and industrial premises, as well as for individually licensing broadcast and online. For me, these developments are not good. If blanket licensing goes, the public will lose its democratic access to music. Artists will suffer too: the winners will no longer compensate the losers.

            My talk drew on a blog entry from last year and it could be considered out of date. Twelve months ago there were many celebrity holdouts from Spotify and there was much talk of 'windowing', i.e. restricting the availability of new releases. Today, this is no longer the case. Spotify has become an aspirational brand. Artists, record companies and publishers are no longer restricting their content on this streaming platform.

            This latest phase does not detract from my larger point, however. Blanket licensing is being eroded. We will miss it when it’s gone. You can access my paper via my academia.edu page.