Radio Music License Committee Settles With SESAC

settlement ends nearly three years of antitrust litigation between the groups, said RMLC. Under the settlement, SESAC must negotiate rates industrywide, the parties will have to undergo binding arbitration when they can’t reach a voluntary agreement, and SESAC’s current rates are frozen at their 2015 level until negotiations for the 2016-2018 term are resolved, it said. The settlement also gives SESAC more ability to license works directly to radio stations and requires SESAC to reimburse RMLC for legal fees from the antitrust case. The agreement’s “immediate impact” is that stations “will not have exposure to further SESAC rate increases and the industry now has the opportunity to obtain sustained SESAC fee relief,” RMLC said. In its release on the settlement, SESAC said it "guarantees a level playing field in establishing the fair market value of our creators’ musical works for the broadcast radio industry." The new agreement has “many benefits” for radio stations, said Wilkinson Barker radio station lawyer David Oxenford in a blog post Friday. One such benefit is that SESAC will publicize its catalog online and not take action against radio operators over SESAC music licenses unless that music has been in the online database for 45 days, he said. This will make it easier for radio operators to avoid inadvertently playing SESAC music and incurring SESAC license fees, Oxenford said. Radio stations need to have current SESAC licenses and “affirmatively opt into coverage” to benefit from the deal, Oxenford said. “RMLC is to provide each station a letter which will provide a general estimate of the fees for the current license term before the station makes the decision.”