Musical compulsory licenses: recordings and jukeboxes

• Author: Robert A. Gorman
• Profession: University of Virginia School of Law
• Pages: 91

Section 115, as already discussed,140 sets forth the compulsory license for the manufacture and distribution of phonorecords of nondramatic musical works, upon the payment of 5.7 cents per record (to be increased every two years beginning with 1992 in accordance with the Consumer Price Index).

Section 116 provides another compulsory license relating to nondramatic musical works, this one for public performances through jukeboxes (in the language of the statute, "coin-operated phonorecord players"). A jukebox operator has the right to place any copyrighted recorded music in its machine, but it must provide a regular accounting and forward royalties for distribution to copyright owners of the music. From 1909 through 1977, jukebox operators had been the beneficiaries of what was known as the "jukebox exemption." Jukebox performances, heard at penny arcades in 1909, had become a billion-dollar industry in the 1970s, and Congress took a much-contested step by stripping the industry of its total exemption and affording jukebox operators a compulsory license upon payment to the Copy Office of an annual fee in the amount of $8 per jukebox to cover all of the music recordings placed in the box during the year. The Copyright Royalty Tribunal has since increased the per-box annual royalty to $50, and has subjected it to a cost-of-living factor that resulted in an increase to $63 per box per year...