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Digital
Turntable.fm signs up ASCAP and BMI
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 25 July 2011
Buzzy US-based music-sharing-streaming-thing Turntable.fm has announced it now has deals with the two main US publishing rights collecting societies, ASCAP and BMI. The recording rights were already sorted through a deal with SoundExchange, the agency that represents the US record companies in the few areas of digital that they have decided to licence collectively.
Confirming it had licensed the fledgling digital service, a spokesperson for ASCAP told CMU last week: “We are pleased to announce that Turntable.fm is licensed by ASCAP. It’s great to see a tech start-up securing an ASCAP license from the outset, ensuring that songwriters, composers and publishers will be paid fairly if the site succeeds. Every song begins with the songwriter, and those songwriters must be able to make a living in the internet age. It will be interesting to follow the progress of Turntable.fm as it gains mainstream awareness and maybe, just maybe, goes shoulder-to-shoulder with the big music services like Pandora and Spotify”.
Still in beta-stage, Turntable.fm has been restricted to US use only because of licensing rules. By licensing recording rights via SoundExchange, the service will only be able to offer a limited amount of on-demand functionality. Pandora licenses via SoundExchange, whereas Spotify had to do deals directly with the record companies.
While Turntable.fm has proved popular with beta users, and has generated some excitement in the artist and label community, it is still unclear what the service’s revenue model will be long term.
