While stations do not pay performance fees for over-the-air broadcasts, we do pay performance fees for streaming. Unfortunately, the performance fees we pay for streaming will increase in 2023. As noted communications attorney David Oxenford pointed out in his recent broadcast blog:
“In a Federal Register notice, the Copyright Royalty Board announced cost-of-living increases in the statutory royalties to be paid by webcasters for the public performance of sound recordings. These are the royalties paid to SoundExchange by those making non-interactive digital transmissions of sound recordings. In 2022, commercial webcasters, including broadcasters streaming their programming on the Internet, pay $.0022 per performance for a nonsubscription transmission and $.0028 per performance for a subscription transmission. The Federal Register publication sets out the computations for the cost-of-living increase and announces that the rate for nonsubscription transmissions made in 2023 will be $.0024 per performance, and for subscription transmissions, the rate will be $.0030 per performance. For noncommercial webcasters, the 2023 rate will be $0.0024 per performance for all digital audio transmissions in excess of the monthly 159,140 aggregate tuning hours of music programming per channel or station that a noncommercial webcaster gets for its yearly $1000 per channel minimum fee.”
To see a complete discussion of the fees that can be assessed for streaming, click here to visit David Oxenford’s broadcast blog.