EU musicians oppose Europe-wide online licensing

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The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, is close to finishing an antitrust investigation into how royalties are collected. The outcome might help large music retailers like Apple Inc.'s iTunes sell from one store across Europe, rather than different stores with different products in each of the 27 EU nations.

Gibb and three other composer-songwriters, representing the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, or ECSA, warned that drastic changes to Europe's current online music market could reduce the royalties that musicians, particularly lesser-known ones with fewer sales, depend on to keep writing songs.

ECSA said that if major online services can negotiate lower, region-wide fees, artists could get less for their songs despite seeing them distributed more widely.

"On a fundamental scale, it's a human right that someone who writes a piece of work should have control of it," Gibb said in a statement, adding that a change could discourage newer songwriters from producing tomorrow's hits.

Musicians make money from their music after they register copyrights with collective-rights managers, who in turn license songs and collect royalties from online services, radio stations, nightclubs and other outlets.

Currently, there are separate licensing managers in each of the 27 EU nations, leading to a highly fragmented market and causing European online music sales to lag behind those in the United States.

EU spokesman Jonathan Todd said the European Commission supports the collective-rights system because they minimize administrative fees and leave musicians with more money.

However, the commission is investigating if this fragmentation violates fair trade rules by giving national copyright agencies a de facto monopoly. The collecting agencies' contracts with composers give authors only one choice of agency per country to collect payments.

Todd said the antitrust probe may be concluded this month but gave no firm date.

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