The Copyright Royalty Board is defending its rate setting decision-making to the U.S. Supreme Court where religious broadcasters are looking to overturn June 2021 decision in the so-called Web V proceeding that covers radio’s streaming royalties for 2021 to 2025. The CRB says it largely maintained the rate structure that has governed noncommercial radio webcasts since 2006, which has set significantly lower rates for noncommercial stations.
The National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the rates set by the CRB. It doubled the minimum fee for noncommercial webcasters to $1,000 per year for each station or channel. But that rate will go up if a station has a large online audience. The CRB says noncommercial operators will need to pay an additional $0.21 for every 100 songs streamed for all digital audio transmissions above 159,140 aggregate tuning hours in a month per station or channel. Those rates rose to $0.25 for every 100 songs on Jan. 1 under annual inflation adjustments.
