ADVOCACY UPDATE
April 23, 2019
COPYRIGHT OFFICE WILL NOW NAME MECHANICAL LICENSING AGENCY
NSAI’s 27-Member Songwriter Board Refutes Opposition Claims
Yesterday was the deadline for comments to the U.S. Copyright Office regarding who will be the new agency to oversee digital mechanical licensing in the United States, as established under the Music Modernization Act. The Nashville Songwriters Assn. International (NSAI) is part of a group called the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) who submitted an application to become the agency. There is one competing submission called the American Music Licensing Collective (AMLC). Until yesterday NSAI did not publicly respond to many claims by the AMLC that we find unfounded.
Now the Register of Copyrights will determine on or before July 8, 2019 who will become the new agency. For the past several months our focus has been to prepare for the MLC to become functional and operative by January 1, 2021, the deadline set under the Music Modernization Act. NSAI has worked on creating solutions to digital music licensing for more than 15 years and helped write protections for American songwriters into the MMA. That’s why the fear campaign by the AMLC is counterproductive and disappointing. Now, we believe it is important to go on record to counter misleading claims.
Here are our comments to the U.S. Copyright office on this subject that we have released publicly, in their entirety.
