In Radio Music Licensing Committee Inc. v. SESAC Inc. et al., plaintiffs have filed suit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania alleging that performing rights organization SESAC Inc. monopolized thousands of songs and charged supra-competitive royalties for blanket licenses. The case is the second antitrust challenge to these licensing practices.
The plaintiff alleges that SESAC has been able to adopt anticompetitive licensing practices because a government consent decree restricting the licensing activities of the competitive performing rights groups the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) does not apply to SESAC. This competitive advantage enables SESAC, the plaintiffs allege, to share its supra-competitive profits with songwriters, thereby ensuring that they do not switch to a competitor performing rights group.
The plaintiff accuses SESAC of “strategically hand-picking” the song writers to establish exclusive control over essential copyright licenses for radio stations. SESAC then allegedly hampered radio station efforts to determine the songs that are in its repertoire by offering only blanket licenses. The plaintiff asks the court to impose on SESAC the same sort of competitive oversight currently applied to ASCAP and BMI.
In March 2011, a similar suit survived a motion to dismiss and litigation is on-going.