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JUDGE SETS ASCAP ROYALTY RATE FOR STREAMING: According to Portfolio.com, “The Wild West of the Web has gotten a little tamer. A federal judge late yesterday resolved a long-running battle between three big online music-streaming services and independent composers and musicians over how—and how much—artists should be paid for songs people listen to over the internet.” (We believe the writer should have simply said “composers” in that sentence, not “musicians” or “artists”.) “In a landmark ruling that sets a precedent for online streaming music royalties, U.S. District Judge William C. Conner in White Plains, New York, ordered Yahoo, Time Warner’s AOL, and RealNetworks to pay as much as $100 million to ASCAP, the leading performance rights organization representing songwriters and composers. The 153-page ruling sets a basic rate of 2.5 percent of music-generated revenues to be collected from the websites for the use of ASCAP-licensed songs between 2002 and 2009.” The “$100 million” figure is according to ASCAP and covers the nine-year period from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2009. More from Portfolio.com here.

RAIN ANALYSIS: Also covering this story, PaidContent.org wrote, “According to the court, AOL would owe roughly $5.9 million for 2006 while Yahoo would owe $6.76 million. But the revenue numbers are redacted so it’s difficult to tell what basis the court used to reach that number.” Let’s do the math — $5.9 million is 2.5% of what? $256 million! It’s hard to imagine that AOL Radio had $256 million in revenues in 2006! (Could this include music video revenues?)

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