Billboard - USA (2020-04-25)

Licensed To Stream?

With venues closed, artists are turning to livestream performances. But clearing rights can be slippery business

BY STEVE KNOPPER

PG. 14 ARE LABELS PANDEMIC-PROOF? PG. 16 HOW WE COVERED: 1918 PG. 18 THE FATE OF IBIZA

T

O MAKE SURE ACTS

like Elton John, Lady Gaga

and Billie Eilish could

perform the songs they

wanted during Global Citizen’s

April  18 “One World: Together at

Home” concert, Julie Wadley and her

team worked 12 - hour days for over a

week. “I woke up early, I worked late,”

says the owner of Say Yes! Music, who

cleared the rights for 130 songs so the

event could be streamed live and

shown on demand all over the world.

Over a month into the pandemic

shutdown, livestream music per-

formances have evolved from cool

curiosities into an essential way for

artists to reach fans, and sometimes

even make money. Besides the Global

Citizen event, which raised $ 127  mil-

lion from mostly corporate sponsors

for food banks and coronavirus-related

causes, Diplo and Major Lazer have

performed over a dozen “Corona

World Tours” on YouTube for between

17 , 000 and 88 , 000 viewers each. A

Bandsintown survey showed that al-

most three-quarters of fans say they’ll

continue to watch such performances

once real-world venues reopen. But as

Wadley’s workload shows, clearing the

necessary rights can be complicated.

Live performances online, like

those at traditional clubs, need public

performance licenses from collect-

ing societies like ASCAP and BMI,

which platforms like YouTube and

Twitch have. Making those same

performances available on demand

on a continual basis also requires

mechanical licenses from publishers

— as well as synch licenses if video is

involved. (DJs also have to get similar

rights to recordings.)

Mechanical licenses vary in cost:

“A couple hundred bucks to a couple

thousand bucks, depending on the na-

ture of their use,” says Barry Slotnick, a

Loeb & Loeb attorney who represents

artists, songwriters, labels and pub-

lishers. But they require the performer

to track down the publisher, which

isn’t always easy.

The law isn’t always entirely clear,

either. Some rights holders believe

that all livestream performances in-

volve making a copy, and thus require

mechanical rights, or synch rights in

the case of video. “It’s like the Wild

West out there, and some of this is

evolving,” adds Ben McLane, a music

attorney who has represented numer-

ous artists and labels. “You don’t

always know which of these licenses

are applicable or necessary.”

Some of the big platforms, includ-

ing YouTube and Facebook (which

owns Instagram), have the necessary

licenses with almost all publishers, so

artists don’t have to worry about what

songs they perform. Other platforms

don’t. “You’ve got companies like

YouTube and Facebook checking all

the boxes, and there are some that say,

‘What boxes?’ ” says a label source.

Twitch, which focuses on livestream-

ing, although not only with music, said

in a statement that it “requires users to

stream content they have the neces-

sary rights to stream — for example,

music they’ve written or licensed.”

If that’s not the case, rights holders

can issue takedown notices under the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Market

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