Music Industry Establishes New Royalty Rates (what's the catch?)

by Mike Masnick
"from the seems-like-it dept on Friday, April 13th, 2012 @ 2:15PM There's been some buzz in music circles about the news that the RIAA, the NMPA (music publishers) and the DMA (digital music companies) have reached an "historic" agreement on mechanical royalty rates, potentially avoiding what often is a contentious rate setting process at the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB). The CRB still needs to approve the deal, but the fact that an agreement was reached outside of having to go through such a contentious process, where the results often seem arbitrary and disconnected from reality, is mostly a good thing..." FULL ARTICLE HERE