Music publishers and streaming services reached an agreement to raise the rates songwriters get paid when their music is played on Spotify and other digital platforms.
The National Music Publishers Association—a trade organization representing major music publishers including Universal, Warner and Sony—and the Digital Music Association—which represents Spotify Technology SA, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and Sirius XM Holdings Inc.’s Pandora—said Wednesday they have hammered out a deal days before they were set to go to trial in front of the Copyright Royalty Board. The board is a three-judge panel that sets the mechanical statutory licensing rates that digital-service providers pay publishers for on-demand audio streams of their songs.