Pandora signs $90 million truce with the recording industry
Thanks to a quirk of copyright law, songs recorded before February 15th, 1972 weren’t covered at the federal level. It’s a loophole of sorts that Pandora, amongst others, has exploited to play classic pre-1972 tracks without paying a cent to the record labels. Or, at least, that was the case, since the firm has just signed a deal with the RIAA that’ll see it pay $90 million to get the record industry to stop hassling it in the courts for unpaid royalties. It’s the second big deal of its kind to land in the last few months, with Sirius XM paying $210 million in a similar deal back in June. It’s probably not worth mentioning that the RIAA is scoring another own-goal, since services like Pandora are good for music sales, is it.
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