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Distribution of Unmatched Accrued Royalties Under the Music Licensing Modernization Act of 2018

Published onAug 07, 2022
Distribution of Unmatched Accrued Royalties Under the Music Licensing Modernization Act of 2018

22 Wake Forest J. Bus. & Intell. Prop. L. 1

The music royalty market has always been a mess. As early as the
turn of the twentieth century, American courts have grappled with how
to assess royalty rates for different means of musical works
dissemination since the early days of sheet music, piano rolls, and
phonorecords. Courts initially struggled to conceptualize how the
copyright in a written musical work could be infringed when reproduced
in a form impossible to interpret by an unaided human being (such as a
piano roll or a phonograph recording). But by 1909, the law finally
caught up with technological progress by bringing to life the concept of
a mechanical license for music copyright. Nevertheless, the progress
of science and technology has consistently outpaced the law—starting
with the issue of federal copyright in sound recordings, and continuing
with the issue of new forms of music dissemination in the age of the
Internet.

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