The Fair Trade Commission has notified JASRAC, a major copyright protection group for musicians, that it will be ordered to stop collecting usage fees because it violates the Antimonopoly Law, sources familiar with the matter said Saturday.
The FTC believes the system, in which TV and radio broadcasters pay the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, will cause difficulties when similar entities try to enter the music copyright business, the sources said.
Under current practice, JASRAC is entitled to a flat 1.5 percent cut of a broadcaster's revenue regardless of how often tunes under its copyright management are aired.
The contract is a boon for broadcasters to some extent since the music under its management accounts for about 99 percent of the ¥26 billion music broadcasting industry. But broadcasters must pay extra to use music managed by non-JASRAC entities.
The FTC has concluded that JASRAC's current arrangement will unjustly deprive non-JASRAC tunes of airtime. Thus the government watchdog will likely ask the group to alter its fee system by linking the price charged to the frequency with which its copyrighted music is broadcast, for example, the sources said.
The FTC probed JASRAC's office in April last year.
JASRAC is the only organization in Japan licensed by the Cultural Affairs Agency to manage music copyrights. It was a monopoly until a new law came into force in 2001 allowing new entrants into the field.
The group is estimated to have collected ¥115.6 billion in fees in fiscal 2007.