Determination of License Fees for Satellite Radio

The Brattle Group was retained by Counsel for SoundExchange, a performing rights organization that collects and distributes royalty payments on behalf of record labels and recording artists, in a proceeding before the Copyright Royalty Board to determine the license fee that SiriusXM Satellite Radio would pay for the right to broadcast sound recordings from 2018 through 2022. A Brattle team worked closely with an outside academic marketing expert to design and implement a consumer survey that measured the extent to which subscribers of music services would switch to alternative services in the face of price increases (i.e., the degree to which satellite radio and streaming music services are viewed as substitutes for one another). The results of the survey were used to calculate the appropriate royalty rate. We also worked with counsel in evaluating the survey methods of opposing experts.