Canadians To Pay For Music Previews ?
Starting tomorrow the Supreme Court of Canada will hear appeals in regards to royalty payments for music previews and music in video games.
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada wants royalties every time someone clicks on one of those short previews when they Shop on iTunes, eMusic
, etc, and had appealed an October 18th, 2007 Copyright Board of Canada decision stating that these qualifies as “fair dealing”.
Unfortunately for the consumer many retailers have decided to drop previews because of this case, including Amazon.ca, and if the Supreme Court rules in their favor previews might be removed on most sites because the royalties would be quite prohibitive.
A ruling establishing royalties on previews could also set a precedent that could hinder film previews and trailers in Canada. But I am hoping the previous Copyright Board of Canada decision will stand.
Previews are not purchases but research to which the end result might be a legitimate purchase. And without previews, people will think twice about making a purchase, so it is counterproductive.
Then there’s the fact that this ruling would not apply to foreign sites, where previews are accessible by Canadians. And any attempt to collect royalties for previews from these foreign sites would be problematic because of their national “fair dealing” exemptions.
Apple and Canada’s largest telecom companies are of course fighting this appeal. The Canadian Recording Industry Association had also opposed royalties on previews so I am guessing that their modern counterpart, Music Canada, also oppose them.
Astral To Launch Online Service In December
Astral Radio will be launching a online music service in December, which will be followed by a mobile compatible service in January.
The bilingual on demand streaming music and music video service will feature major and independent recordings and will be compatible with the major social media sites.
Additional information on this service can be found on this press release.
RIM Announces Blackberry Music
Research In Motion, a.k.a RIM, has published details about their new BBM Music service today.
According to their press release, this new Blackberry Messenger based music service will feature over 45 million recordings from major labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI, which will be made available via a cloud service to Blackberry users in Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States.
This Omnifone powered service will allow users to access 50 songs for US$4.99 a month but is currently in beta testing, with a limited amount of users.
Galaxie Goes Mobile
Stingray Digital has just released a free application enabling people to listen to the Galaxie music service.
This 48 commercial free music streaming service is primarily distributed on digital cable systems in Canada. But now for $4.99 a month or $9.99 for three months or $39.99 for a year, Apple product users can access these channels. Additional information can be found by clicking the following :
