An arbitration panel has officially set a 2023-2026 licensing rate for SESAC and the RMLC. Photo Credit: SESAC
One lengthy dispute – and one arbitration proceeding – later, the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) and SESAC have resolved their rate-negotiation disagreement for 2023-2026.
Both the performance rights organization and the radio representative confirmed the development following an involved battle concerning payment particulars. Unsurprisingly, said battle saw the PRO pushing for better compensation while the RMLC pursued lower rates more in line with those behind its ASCAP and BMI agreements.
(The RMLC, membership in which encompasses about 10,000 terrestrial stations in the U.S., previously described “SESAC’s demand” as an effort to obtain “a very substantial rate increase over the prior license rate.”)
Moreover, this wasn’t the RMLC’s first licensing-confrontation rodeo with a PRO – or even its first dust-up with Blackstone’s SESAC. To be sure, a related release put out in 2017 by the RMLC about a separate showdown is noticeably similar to comments pertaining to the newer battle.
In any event, with SESAC having kicked off the aforesaid arbitration proceeding in April of 2023, the relevant panel has opted for a 0.2824% rate on each station’s net revenue, up roughly 10.4% from 0.2557%, per radio trades including Radio Ink.
According to the same source, a substantial discount will remain in place for non-music stations – though “specific long-form terms are still being finalized.” And while only time will reveal the exact terms (and potentially the rate sought by SESAC when talks first began) at hand, SESAC president and COO Scott Jungmichel touted the decision as a victory.
“The arbitration award reflects another failure of the RMLC to impose regulated rates on SESAC since SESAC and the RMLC concluded their settlement in 2015,” Jungmichel relayed in a statement provided to DMN. “The panel awarded SESAC an over 10% increase while rejecting the RMLC’s attempts to lower the rate, turn back the clock, and yoke SESAC to the regulated rates paid by ASCAP and BMI.
“In addition, the revenue base subject to the fee is significantly greater than the revenue upon which station groups had sought to pay under the 2017 award,” concluded the SESAC higher-up of nearly five years.
DMN also reached out to the RMLC for comment, but didn’t receive a response in time for publishing. In any event, it wasn’t all too long ago that the RMLC put to rest a separate dispute with Irving Azoff’s Global Music Rights.
Meanwhile, the latter PRO last year settled a pair of missing-payments complaints it’d filed against Red Wolf Broadcasting and One Putt Broadcasting, before spearheading a different action yet, this time against Vermont Broadcast Associates, at the top of 2024. GMR voluntarily dropped the suit with prejudice in April.