In this panel held at a 2007 meeting of the American Bar Association, panelists Gary R. Greenstein, Jacqueline C. Charlesworth, Lee Knife, Richard Owens, Victoria Bassetti discuss the state of the digital music marketplace today from numerous points of view – licensing bodies, record companies, regulatory agencies, and artist advocates, and assess whether and how the current regulatory climate accurately and fairly reflects the best interests of all participants. Among the topics discussed are: today’s digital marketplace and the globalization of music distribution; the recent and ongoing debates over proper performance royalty rates for music played on webcasts; whether there exists a model that could scale efficiently to handle licensing issues on a global basis, and what kind of regulatory models are most likely to both foster the creation of music and encourage consumers of music to seek out new artists and songs via digital outlets.

In this clip from a panel held at a 2007 meeting of the American Bar Association on “The Digital Music Industry – Where Are We? How Did We Get Here? Where Are Things Going?,” the panel addresses a question that asks them to imagine what digital music distribution models might encourage artists to create new music, and consumers find new music in turn.

In this clip from a panel held at a 2007 meeting of the American Bar Association on “The Digital Music Industry – Where Are We? How Did We Get Here? Where Are Things Going?,” the panelists debate whether the new performance royalty rates imposed by the Copyright Royalty Board in 2007 will kill the internet radio industry, and what is the way forward for internet radio. They also explain the nuts and bolts of how the Copyright Royalty Board functions and how decisions are made and processed by this body.

In this clip from a panel held at a 2007 meeting of the American Bar Association on “The Digital Music Industry – Where Are We? How Did We Get Here? Where Are Things Going?,” the panelists debate the state of the digital music marketplace today – the difficulties that are holding up development of a more robust digital market, what could be done to improve market efficiency, and the legal ramifications of any such changes. In particular, they discuss various sides of the problems introduced into the licensing process when a global digital marketplace tries to interact with the hundreds of local licensing schemes and interpretations of rights that exist for the content being sold, and explain the problems that rights administrators face when trying to apply decades-old regulations to brand-new situations.

In this clip from a panel held at a 2007 meeting of the American Bar Association on “The Digital Music Industry – Where Are We? How Did We Get Here? Where Are Things Going?,” the panelists debate whether the new performance royalty rates imposed by the Copyright Royalty Board in 2007 will kill the internet radio industry, and explore what is the way forward for internet radio. They also explain the nuts and bolts of how the Copyright Royalty Board functions and how decisions are made and processed by this body.

In this clip from a panel held at a 2007 meeting of the American Bar Association on “The Digital Music Industry – Where Are We? How Did We Get Here? Where Are Things Going?,” the panelists debate whether small and nonprofit internet radio entities deserve to have a smaller compulsory license rate for the music they play than the big players in the industry.

In this clip from a panel held at a 2007 meeting of the American Bar Association on “The Digital Music Industry – Where Are We? How Did We Get Here? Where Are Things Going?,” the panelists discuss the current state of compulsory licensing rates for internet radio stations, and discuss the merits of various strategies for changing the rate structure going forward – especially in regard to balancing the diverse interest of publishers, record labels, broadcasters, and artists.