According to the AP, the EU is investigating the agencies in Europe that collect royalties from digital music services to be distributed to artists. The current setup has each EU country with its own monopoly licensing agency, forcing services like iTunes to negotiate separate deals with each different country, and have no alternatives to speak with in those countries. The suggestion is that the system is essentially a cartel:

The commission said that Europe-wide agreements guaranteed collecting societies a monopoly and prevented the emergence of new copyright collection agencies. The confederation and its members have two months to respond to the charges and may face fines if found guilty of breaking EU competition rules.

The story states that EU online music sales are only about 13% of US sales.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 3:00 PM | International

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