Recently Pandora CEO admitted that Pandora have stopped paying performers royalties on their pre-1972 recordings. (BTW this is a guy who received $29,000,000 in executive compensation last year.)

Sirius apparently never paid artists on pre-1972 recordings. So it’s unlikely they have ever paid these performers either. How is this fair? How does this happen in this country in this day and age? How do these companies get away with this?

Well both of these multi-billion dollar public listed companies have taken a novel legal approach to pre-1972 recordings. Because pre-1972 recordings are covered by a patchwork of state rather than federal copyright law (or at least that’s Pandora’s and Sirius’s interpretation) these two companies claim they don’t have to pay performers royalties on these recordings. Understand–it’s not that these recordings are not protected at all, it’s that federal copyright protection for sound recordings started on February 15, 1972 and the performance royalty is in the federal Copyright Act. There is nothing in the Copyright Act that excludes pre-72 recordings.