Copyright Office Seeks Comments on Music Modernization Rules

The U.S. Copyright Office is inviting musicians, producers, and others to help it develop regulations guiding the implementation of a new digital music law.

The office’s request for public comment, published Sept. 24 in the Federal Register, seeks guidance on matters such as how to build and manage a new central music database, a requirement of the 2018 Music Modernization Act.

The law, signed into law last October, requires digital music services like Spotify to pay music royalties to a newly-formed nonprofit entity that will pass the revenue on to copyright holders. That entity, the Mechanical Licensing Collective, must be ...