Copyright Tribunal rules over radio royalty rates

A two-year copyright battle between collection body PPCA and Commercial Radio and Audio over royalty rates has been decided, with both sides claiming victory.

The Phonographic Performance Company of Australia is arguing two points: the first being that the 0.4% of commercial radio revenues that is paid each year by CRA in order to play music on the stations — last year CRA paid just $4.4 million for the use of sound recordings based on revenue of roughly $1 billion. — is inadequate.

This revenue goes to the owners of the song recordings, rather than the musicians involved in the creation of the song.