Court: Yahoo's Launchcast Not an 'Interactive' Music Service

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on August 21, 2009 - 10:54am.

New York - A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that said Yahoo's (NASD: YHOO) Launchcast is not an "interactive" digital music service, and as such should not be required to pay record labels additional fees to play their songs online, Reuters reported. Yahoo will still pay SoundExchange licensing fees for songs played on its Web radio service, but will not have to negotiate fees with individual labels.

The labels had argued that the ability to skip past songs a user does not like does not constitute an "interactive" service.

"The [Launchcast] user has control over the genre of songs to be played for 5,000 songs, but this degree of control is no different from a traditional radio listener expressing a preference for a country music station over a classic rock station," Judge Richard Wesley wrote in the opinion.

Major label Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG and several other labels originally sued Yahoo back in 2001.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/qof8x (Reuters)

Published in DMW Daily, August 21, 2009

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Comments

Important Decision!! I have

Submitted by EK (not verified) on August 21, 2009 - 3:29pm.

Important Decision!! I have not read it but i will def do so. Did you mean to type that the labels argued that the service DID constitute an interactive service as opposed to "not" below? Here is the text from your article: "The labels had argued that the ability to skip past songs a user does not like does not constitute an "interactive" service. "