The Week In Music Publishing: March 9, 2012

This Week's Top 5 Stories

SESAC is hastening domestic/terrestrial radio performance royalty payments to monthly distributions – as opposed to the traditional quarterly model. The change will kick off in the coming months, then expanding other performance platforms later this year.

• A lingering lawsuit is slowing any potential sale of SESAC. Hanging over any deal is an antitrust suit brought by 1,000+ TV broadcasters against SESAC challenging their price-setting power.
• ASCAP reported revenues of $985 million for 2011 – the second best revenues in the organization's history and an increase of 5.4% from 2010. One of the biggest jumps came from foreign royalty collection, which totaled $347 million – an increase of approximately $50 million from 2010.
• Bill Gates's Corbis is launching an online service designed to ease the process for licensing major label artists for a variety of uses. The GreenLight Music service features over songs from catalogs controlled by Warner Music, EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music and Sony ATV.
• Music Copyright Service of China (MCSC) has a significant deal with Chinese TV broadcasters regarding performance royalty payments.

New Deals

• Award-winning Nashville songwriter, Luke Laird, has re-signed to an exclusive, worldwide publishing agreement with Universal Music Publishing Group.
• British folk-punk songwriter Frank Turner has signed an exclusive music publishing agreement with BMG Chrysalis UK.
• EMI Music Publishing has signed a worldwide deal with 2010 X Factor runner-up Rebecca Ferguson - expected to net over £500,000 in songwriting royalties.
• Talpa Music, Dutch independent music publishing company, has invested in UK-based independent publisher Phrased Differently.
• Turntable.fm is close to penning agreements with Universal Music Group and Sony, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the talks.

Post from Songtrust - a service for bands and songwriters to collect all their publishing royalties.