The Stage

Apple deal with MCPS and PRS gives musicians royalties for online sales

Published Tuesday 29 June 2004 at 13:05 by Ruth Gillespie

Computer giant Apple has signed a licensing deal with the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society and the Performing Right Society that will ensure composers, songwriters and publishers receive royalties when their work is used on the new online music service iTunes.

MCPS and PRS first introduced temporary licences in 2000 but these were replaced in 2002 with the Joint Online Licence, which continues to provide the framework for legitimate online services in the UK. Other companies to recently sign a JOL include AOL UK, Napster 2.0 and Bignoisemusic.com.

Steve Porter, chief operating officer for the MCPS-PRS Alliance, said: “We are delighted to have concluded deals with the online music services that have launched in the UK in recent weeks. We have long believed that a legitimate online music market would provide significant revenues for our members and hope that we will now begin to see the online music business fulfilling its true potential.”

Following its US success, iTunes officially launched its European facility, initially operating in the UK, Germany and France, on June 15. With a catalogue of 700,000 songs, individual tracks will be sold for 79p in the UK and can be downloaded to PC, copied to CD and played on a portable iPod.

Announcing the European launch, chief executive of Apple Worldwide Steve Jobs said: “We are marching this digital music revolution around the world. Piracy is the biggest market for downloads - we have to understand it and offer a better product. We now have the most popular place in the world to buy online music.”

Although the market is still in its infancy, more than 500,000 music tracks have been downloaded legally in the UK so far this year. This figure is expected to increase as more homes get broadband, more legitimate sites are launched and the record industry’s litigation against pirates takes hold.