We’re getting comments on the settlement of the Mechanical Licensing Collective and Digital Licensee Coordinator (two lyrical titles for songwriter masters…NOT), proclaimed in their cozy proceeding at the Copyright Royalty Board.  David discussed in his open letter to the Copyright Royalty Judges released over the weekend.

There was nary a startup to be seen as part of this negotiation so not surprisingly, some of the comments we got are from startups and everyone is worried about retaliation so commented anonymously.  Here’s a sample from startups:

The fee imposed by the biggest tech companies in the world on their competition is $5,000 for 5,000 recordings but $60,000 for 5,001 recordings?  WTF?  I never asked for this. Why doesn’t Spotify just write the check instead of all this penny pinching?

This is US only and is going to totally screw up my MFN deals with the labels if I use the blanket license because I have to match each label with the “fee”?  Thanks lawyers!

They keep saying this is like SoundExchange it is nothing like it. First off the yearly fee!  SoundExchange protects small webcasters and helps competition with a level playing field so you dont have another big rights payment.  What a sh*t show.

How can there be no public comment?  If the government sets a fee, don’t they have to put it for public comments and show back up.  This is like the British East India company.

Why would I pay $60,000 for US only?  For streaming only?  I pay for the startup costs?  Why don’t they pay for my startup costs?  Google & big guys started this thing I never wanted it. Let them pay for it.

Still trying to understand how this helps me…

This is the first I heard about the whole thing and they want more money?

From songwriters:

No one believes this is going to launch on time now I believe it even less.

So let me see… $60,000 yearly fee will increase or decrease the number of services competing for my songs? I will take a wild guess and say decrease.

Still trying to be positive about MMA but it gets harder all the time