Washington - The Digital Media Association (DiMA), a trade group that represents webcasters and online retailers like Apple and Amazon, on Friday asked a federal court to rule that online retailers' use of 30-second music preview clips are "fair use," and not subject to royalty payments.

New York - Performing rights organization ASCAP said on Tuesday that it has signed a two-year deal to offer Nimbit's direct-to-fan sales and catalog management online tools as part of the basic membership package for than 320,000 ASCAP songwriters and composers. ASCAP has been offering Nimbit's automated website creation and e-mail promotional services since 2003.

New York - A federal judge in New York has created a formula for calculating the royalties that large webcasters AOL (NYSE: TWX), RealNetworks (NASD: RNWK) and Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) must pay songwriters and music publishers for streaming their songs between 2002 and 2009, which could provide just one performing rights organization, ASCAP, as much as $100 million in payments. U.S. District Judge William Conner's ruling stipulates that the webcasters must pay 2.5% of music-related revenue to ASCAP's 320,000 members; by that math, for 2006, AOL owes $5.95 million, and Yahoo owes $6.76 million.

New York - Performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI on Tuesday jointly announced the launch of RapidCue, an online service that film, TV and cable producers can use to enter, manage and electronically submit music cue sheet data. A cue sheet is a document that lists data on all the music performed in a particular film or TV show, used to calculate royalties paid to artists and copyright holders.

New York - A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that digital music and media downloads are not "public performances," and therefore should not be subject to a public performance license and additional royalty payment.

Washington - The Digital Media Association (DiMA), a trade group of webcasters whose members include AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple's iTunes Store, has filed a "friend of the court" brief opposing a claim by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) that digital music downloads should be considered "public performances," and therefore subject to an additional performance license and royalty.