Global Music Rights LLC, the performance rights collective founded by Irving Azoff, is asking a California federal court to dismiss "monopolization" claims raised by the Radio Music License Committee, which represents some 10,000 radio stations throughout the nation.
GMR is an upstart competitor to BMI and ASCAP, and with a repertory that includes works performed by The Eagles, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Drake, and Madonna, aims to score better royalties for songwriters. The outfit isn't beholden to the consent decrees that require BMI and ASCAP to offer blanket licenses to music users. The Justice Department is, but in the meantime, RMLC essentially demands that GMR be subjected to the same kind of forced licensing put on BMI and ASCAP.
"The fundamental flaw in this case is that Radio Music Licensing Committee asserts antitrust claims based on an increase, not a decrease, in competition," states a motion to dismiss filed on Thursday. "Although it purports to describe a “monopoly” and 'restraint of trade,' RMLC’s complaint in fact describes competitive entry into a previously oligopolistic market and a healthy expansion of trade that benefits songwriters.
"The Sherman Act violation that has harmed GMR in the here-and-now, as the story goes, is that RMLC somehow managed to get all 10,000 of its radio station members to agree with each other not to buy a license from GMR—even though they could not or would not avoid playing songs that could be licensed only through GMR," write RMLC's attorneys. ".
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