Music Reports Inc., an advanced rights administration platform, is the first company to offer electronic filing of mechanical licenses for on-demand streaming with the United States Copyright Office, automating the “Notice of Intent” (NOI) process and enabling hundreds of thousands of new releases to be instantly licensed for distribution. This service is now available to any on-demand music provider that needs clearances to operate in America.
Music Reports has often worked with the Copyright Office to address regulatory and practical challenges in invoking the statutory mechanical license and accounting pursuant to its terms. Until now, there has been no practical NOI process to handle the hundreds of thousands of recordings that become available each month for distribution on digital music services. Under section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act, notice must be given to the composition owner of the licensee’s intention to distribute the work, and if the owner is not registered with the Copyright Office, the notice can be filed with the Copyright Office itself. It is not uncommon for copyright owners, even popular artists, to register their compositions well after recordings of them have been commercially released. This creates a potential liability for online music services seeking to expose new music to the public. Music Reports’ new NOI service alleviates this risk for the music services. Royalties for these tracks are accrued until ownership is determined, and publishers can register their catalogs and claim unmatched tracks through Music Reports’ free, publisher-facing web portal.
“We are very pleased to now offer this commercial-scale solution to the problem of mechanical license clearance in the United States,” said Bill Colitre, Vice President and General Counsel of Music Reports, Inc. “Once again, we are meeting the market with a technology-centric answer to a major administrative challenge in the music business. Combined with our recently-launched Publisher Dashboard and Claiming System, we have created a solution that works for music services and for music publishers.”
For more information, visit musicreports.com.
