Determination of Rates and Terms for Digital Performance of Sound Recordings and Making of Ephemeral Copies To Facilitate Those Performances (Web VI)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS <SUBAGY>Copyright Royalty Board</SUBAGY> <CFR>37 CFR Part 380</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No 23-CRB-0012-WR (2026-2030)]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Determination of Rates and Terms for Digital Performance of Sound Recordings and Making of Ephemeral Copies To Facilitate Those Performances (Web VI)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), Library of Congress. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule related to certain noncommercial webcasting. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Copyright Royalty Judges are publishing for comment proposed regulations governing the rates and terms for the digital performance of sound recordings by Educational Media Foundation and for the making of ephemeral recordings necessary for the facilitation of such transmissions for the period from January 1, 2026, through December 31, 2030. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and objections, if any, are due January 5, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments using eCRB, the Copyright Royalty Board's online electronic filing application, at <E T="03">https://app.crb.gov/.</E> <E T="03">Instructions:</E> To send your comment through eCRB, if you don't have a user account, you will first need to register for an account and wait for your registration to be approved. Approval of user accounts is only available during business hours. Once you have an approved account, you can only sign in and file your comment after setting up multi-factor authentication, which can be done at any time of day. All comments must include the Copyright Royalty Board name and the docket number for this proposed rule. All properly filed comments will appear without change in eCRB at <E T="03">https://app.crb.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read submitted background documents or comments, go to eCRB, the Copyright Royalty Board's electronic filing and case management system, at <E T="03">https://app.crb.gov/,</E> and search for docket number 23-CRB-0012-WR (2026-2030). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Anita Brown, CRB Program Specialist, at (202) 707-7658 or <E T="03">crb@loc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Section 114 of the Copyright Act, title 17 of the United States Code, provides a statutory license that allows for the public performance of sound recordings by means of a digital audio transmission by, among others, eligible nonsubscription transmission services. 17 U.S.C. 114(f). For purposes of the section 114 license, an “eligible nonsubscription transmission” is a noninteractive digital audio transmission that does not require a subscription for receiving the transmission. The transmission must also be made as part of a service that provides audio programming consisting in whole or in part of performances of sound recordings the purpose of which is to provide audio or other entertainment programming, but not to sell, advertise, or promote particular goods or services. <E T="03">See</E> 17 U.S.C. 114(j)(6). Services using the section 114 license may need to make one or more temporary or “ephemeral” copies of a sound recording to facilitate the transmission of that recording. The section 112 statutory license allows for the making of these ephemeral reproductions. 17 U.S.C. 112(e). Chapter 8 of the Copyright Act requires the Copyright Royalty Judges (“Judges”) to conduct proceedings every five years to determine the rates and terms for the sections 114 and 112 statutory licenses. 17 U.S.C. 801(b)(1), 804(b)(3)(A). The current proceeding commenced in January 2024 for rates and terms that will become effective from January 1, 2026 through December 31, 2030. Pursuant to section 804(b)(3)(A), the Judges published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a notice commencing the proceeding and requesting that interested parties submit their petitions to participate. 89 FR 812 (Jan. 5, 2024). SoundExchange, Inc. (“SoundExchange”), National Religious Broadcasters Music License Committee, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and the Educational Media Foundation (“EMF”)  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> each filed Petitions to Participate, as did others. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The National Religious Broadcasters Music License Committee subsequently filed a Notice that it has changed its name to the NRB Music Licensing Committee, Inc. (“NRBMLC”). Notice of Participant Name Change (Nov. 14, 2025). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  EMF subsequently filed a Notice that it withdraws from this proceeding. EMF Notice of Withdrawal (Jan. 31, 2025). </FTNT> On November 21, 2025, the Judges received a joint motion stating that participants in the indicated proceeding, SoundExchange and NRBMLC (“Settling Parties”), together with EMF, had reached a partial settlement regarding rates and terms for certain internet transmissions and related ephemeral recordings made by EMF for 2026-2030 and seeking approval of that partial settlement. Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement, Docket No. 23-CRB-0012-WR (2026-2030) (Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement) (eCRB no. 77856). The Settling Parties attached the proposed regulations concerning the settlement, as Exhibit A. <E T="03">Id.</E> The Settling Parties attached a copy of the writing embodying their agreement concerning the settlement, as Exhibit B, and represented that there are no other agreements beyond the Exhibit B that represent consideration for, or are contractually related to, the Settlement. <E T="03">Id.</E> Based upon the Judges' review of the Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement and relevant attachments—including the Judges' observation that the Settling Parties include sufficient representations that Exhibit B to the Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement constitutes “their agreement concerning the Settlement”, and that there are no other agreements beyond Exhibit B that represent consideration for, or are contractually related to, the Settlement—the Judges find no reason to doubt that Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement, including the Exhibits A and B, constitutes “the agreement” for purposes of Section 801(b)(7)(A), and that the Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement satisfies Section 801(b)(7)(A). Therefore, the Judges hereby publish the Proposed Regulations and request comment from the public. The contents of Exhibit A are represented in the Proposed Regulations in this Notice. Exhibit B may be found on pages 15-20 of the Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The docket for this proceeding, including documents referenced in this document, may be accessed via the Electronic filing system eCRB at <E T="03">https://app.crb.gov</E> and perform a case search for docket 23-CRB-0012-WR (2026-2030). Exhibit B is included in the document that has been assigned eCRB document number 77856. <E T="03">https://app.crb.gov/document/download/77856.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Statutory Timing of Adoption of Rates and Terms</HD> Section 801(b)(7)(A) of the Copyright Act authorizes the Judges to adopt royalty rates and terms negotiated by “some or all of the participants in a proceeding at any time during the proceeding” provided they are submitted to the Judges for approval. The Judges must provide “an opportunity to comment on the agreement” to participants and non-participants in the rate proceeding who “would be bound by the terms, rates, or other determination set by any agreement. . . .” 17 U.S.C. 801(b)(7)(A)(i). Participants in the proceeding may also “object to [the agreement's] adoption as a basis for statutory terms and rates.” <E T="03">Id.</E> The Judges “may decline to adopt the agreement as a basis for statutory terms and rates for participants that are not parties to the agreement,” only “if any participant [in the proceeding] objects to the agreement and the [Judges] conclude, based on the record before them if one exists, that the agreement does not provide a reasonable basis for setting statutory terms or rates.” 17 U.S.C. 801(b)(7)(A)(ii), or where the negotiated agreement includes provisions that are contrary to the provisions of the applicable license(s) or otherwise contrary to statutory law. <E T="03">See</E> Scope of the Copyright Royalty Judges Authority to Adopt Confidentiality Requirements upon Copyright Owners within a Voluntarily Negotiated License Agreement, 78 FR 47421, 47422 (Aug. 5, 2013), citing 74 FR 4537, 4540 (Jan. 26, 2009). Any rates and terms adopted pursuant to this provision would be applicable to all copyright owners of sound recordings and EMF for the license period 2026-2030. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Adjustments to Rates and Terms</HD> According to the Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement, EMF will make monthly lump sum payments commencing with $593,750 per month ($7,125,000 per year) in 2026 to allow it to make an unlimited number of public performances and related ephemeral recordings under the Sections 112(e) and 114 statutory licenses on non-customized channels. Its payments for 2026 are represented as an increase over what it has been paying in 2025, and after 2026, its payments increase by 4% per year for each year of the rate period. Joint Motion to Adopt Settlement at 2. The Settlement continues EMF's established prior reporting arrangements, which provide for submission of a single, monthly report of use covering all transmissions made by EMF and its affiliates covered by the Settlement, providing what the parties state are administrative efficiencies to SoundExchange and EMF. The agreement also provides EMF, a nonprofit entity largely reliant on listener donations for its funding, an established, fixed royalty obligation which the parties assert serves to simplify EMF's plan ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 35k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━