Pandora Pleased With Judge’s Ruling in Dispute With ASCAP
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers played down the significance of a judge’s summary judgment in favor of Pandora in a rate dispute. Pandora earlier Wednesday claimed a partial victory in the dispute after Judge Denise Cote of U.S. District Court in New York granted summary judgment Tuesday. The decision upheld Pandora’s right to perform all compositions in the ASCAP repertory, said Pandora.
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But Cote’s decision to grant summary judgment “has no impact” on ASCAP’s “fundamental position in this case that songwriters deserve fair pay for their hard work, an issue” that the court hasn’t decided yet, said ASCAP CEO John LoFrumento in a written statement. At the scheduled Dec. 4 trial, he said ASCAP “will demonstrate the true value of songwriters’ and composers’ performance rights, a value that Pandora’s music streaming competitors have recognized by negotiating rather than litigating” with music creators. ASCAP’s “more than 470,000 songwriter, composer and music publisher members make their living creating the music without which Pandora would have no business,” he said.
Pandora hoped the judge’s decision “will put an end to the attempt by certain ASCAP-member publishers to unfairly and selectively withhold their catalogs” from Pandora, said Chris Harrison, Pandora assistant general counsel, in a news release. Its motion for summary judgment, which sought an interpretation of the consent decree under which ASCAP has operated since 1941, was entered July 1. Pandora asked the court to determine that selective withdrawals of so-called “new media” rights by ASCAP-member publishers couldn’t be implemented against Pandora without violating the consent decree. Cote’s decision “makes clear that Pandora is entitled to a blanket license the scope of which is not diminished in any manner by the publishers’ attempts to ‘withdraw’ these rights” from ASCAP, said Pandora. The ruling “has no impact on the royalty rates” Pandora now pays to ASCAP, said Pandora. Pandora is “committed to a responsible, sustainable and equitable royalty structure that benefits and grows the entire industry and does not discriminate against new technologies,” said Harrison.
Cote granted summary judgment because the existing antitrust consent decree requiring ASCAP to license its works to Pandora from 2011 to 2015 “unambiguously requires ASCAP to provide Pandora with a license to perform all of the works in its repertory,” she said in her decision. ASCAP “retains the works of ‘withdrawing’ publishers in its repertory even if it purports to lack the right to license them to a subclass of New Media entities,” she said. Pandora shares closed 1.8 percent higher Wednesday at $25.64.