Beware of Music in Your Podcasts – SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC Don’t Give You the Rights You Need | Broadcast Law Blog

By David Oxenford on February 3, 2015   Posted in Intellectual Property, Internet Radio, Music Rights, On Line Media, Programming Regulations, Website Issues

Last week, I listened in to presentation by RAIN News providing an excellent overview of the digital music industry (their Whitepaper setting out the findings reported during the presentation is available here).  One statement in that presentation suggested to me today’s topic – the use of music in podcasts.  In the RAIN presentation, a statement was made that most major podcasts are spoken word, but no explanation of that fact was provided. One of the biggest reasons for the lack of music in podcasts has to do with rights issues, as the royalties paid to SoundExchange and even to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC don’t apply to traditional podcasts meant to be downloaded onto a digital audio recording device like an iPhone or any other smartphone.  We wrote a warning about this issue a couple of years ago, but as the popularity of podcasts seems to once again on the rise, the warning is worth repeating.

Music Connection News!

Music Connection will be bringing you several great new features starting in May and June, so instead of featuring a specific genre this month, we will continue our mission to celebrate ALL local music in May while we focus on updates to our website and plans to bring you the BEST local music resources!  To start this month off, we thought we’d give you a sneak peak at some of the upcoming changes we’ve been hinting at!