Final ruling in Flo & Eddie lawsuit against Pandora provides overview of the pre-1972 copyright debate

completemusicupdate.com:

The US district court for the Central District Of California last week published a judgement that provided a pretty extensive overview of what was a big legal debate in the US music industry for a time: whether online radio services like Pandora and Sirius were obliged to pay royalties when they played pre-1972 recordings.A lot of that debate centred on lawsuits pursued by the artists Flo & Eddie, who were members of the 1960s band The Turtles.In theory, the 2018 Music Modernization Act removed the ambiguities that those lawsuits sought to address.

However, some technicalities remained in relation to Flo & Eddie’s litigation, meaning the lawsuit against Sirius rumbled on until 2021, and the Pandora dispute until last week.

Ultimately the courts sided with both Sirius and Pandora.US-wide federal copyright law is unusual in that it doesn’t provide a general performing right as part of the sound recording copyright, meaning AM/FM radio stations do not need a licence from or to pay any royalties to the record industry.However, there is a digital performance right, which means satellite and online radio services do need to get licences from the record industry.

Though they can – if they wish – rely on the compulsory licence administered by Sound Exchange.But federal copyright law only applied to sound recordings released since 1972, with earlier recordings protected by state-level laws.So Sirius and Pandora decided that they weren’t obliged to pay royalties when they used pre-1972 recordings.