“Is there any limit to Taylor Swift’s power?” Tim Lordan asks.

It’s just before 1 p.m. this past Friday, and Lordan — the executive director of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee — is moderating a Capitol Hill panel discussion on the public policy of music streaming. With just hours to go before the weekend, he’s assembled a group of experts to answer a playful and provocative question: between Swift and Congress, who has a greater effect on the streaming industry?

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[…]But, as The Future of Music Coalition reports, independent music labels deserve some of the credit for Apple’s reversal as well. “It wasn’t just Taylor Swift,” Casey Rae of the Future of Music Coalition told NPR. “There was a huge chunk of the indie label community that was simply not willing to let Apple have a free pass.”

[…]

Current copyright royalty formulas rest on a legal framework that dates back to the early part of last century, and “the time is ripe to question the existing paradigm,” U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante said in a 245-page February report on “Copyright and the Music Marketplace.”

The copyright board’s proceeding covers the bulk of payments to recording artists and labels made by Pandora and other digital music providers. By December, the board will decide Internet radio royalty rates through 2020.

Traditional AM and FM radio stations — such as KXMZ — are exempt from these royalties. read more