Music discovery platform Pandora, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and music rights management company BMI announced the signing of two separate multi-year licensing agreements for their combined catalogs of more than 20 million musical works. The deals put an end to legal battles between the music platform and songwriters and publishers.
These deals create business benefits for Pandora, while modernising compensation in the US for ASCAP and BMI songwriters and publishers. In connection with the signing of the BMI agreement, Pandora agreed to withdraw its appeal of the May 2015 order in the recent BMI rate case.
While the specific terms of both multi-year agreements are confidential, for each deal, the parties worked together to build an innovative approach to public performance licensing. The deals allow both ASCAP and BMI to further their goal of delivering improved performance royalties for their songwriters and publishers, while Pandora will benefit from greater rate certainty and the ability to add new flexibility to the company's product offering over time. The public performance royalties Pandora also pays to rights holders of master recordings are not affected by this agreement.
