Music publishers are demanding a bigger piece of the streaming pie for songwriters.
The National Music Publishers Association and five major streamers—Spotify Technology SA, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and Sirius XM Holdings Inc.’s Pandora—this week are duking it out in front of the Copyright Royalty Board, a three-judge panel that sets the statutory licensing rates that digital-service providers pay publishers for on-demand audio streams of their songs. The publishers argued in proposals that were due Wednesday at midnight for nearly doubling the current rate, while the streamers are angling to pay less—rates effectively below 2008 levels.
