It happens now and again. XM Satellite Radio has agreed to pay Universal Music Group fees for the recording of songs on its portable devices such as the Pioneer Inno. Payments will cover use of UMG music from the beginning of the devices' market introductions. The major labels had sued XM to force it to pay a downloading license for these devices as Sirius had agreed to do. XM executives said they didn't need to pay. Now they've changed their tune.

Is it because they're trying to get their merger with Sirius approved? Possibly. Their chances in court didn't look good, either. A preliminary court ruling (about whether the case should go forward) about a year ago was worded strongly in favor of the labels.

The reason doesn't matter to me, however. What matters is that recording artists on UMG labels will now get paid when a listener downloads their song. Before anyone corrects me on the technology here, please know that I bought my wife an Inno for her birthday. I'm familiar with how the recording process works, and let's just say it's pretty impressive. Let me also say I asked my wife not to record any songs until this issue was resolved, and as a believer in artists' rights she has complied.

When I broke down and bought the Inno, my hope was that once Sirius acquired XM, they'd start paying licenses, but the merger still hasn't happened. This market development is most welcome, but we still need XM to make deals with the other labels. 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 11:34 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under creators, market forces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.