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During a conference on creative rights and cultural diversity organised by EUobserver on 6 December 2007, José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, stated the European Commission (EC) was not yet ready to take any short-term decision related to the management of the online music market.

Despite new calls at the conference to review the voluntary guidelines on the collective management of online music rights issued in 2005 by the EC and supported by collective rights managers (CRMs), Barroso said the EC needed some time to find the right solutions based on a balanced, sustainable consensus of all the involved stakeholders.

The guidelines are not legally binding for the EU states and, according to the music industry, about 21 out of the 27 members refuse to apply them. The European collecting societies also argue that the present guidelines favour big Anglo-American music publishers.

However, as Jorgen Holmquist, director general of the European Union executive's internal market unit stated, a public consultation this year has shown a lack of broad support for this kind of legislation. Yet, he agreed that the system for managing online music rights was unsatisfactory.

Mr Barroso stated he wanted to ensure that cultural diversity was properly represented on the Internet. "It's clear for me that we should not allow monopolistic licensing structures to emerge in the internet. The repertoire available in the internet must adequately reflect Europe's cultural diversity," he said.

The EC guidelines presently give authors and composers the right to choose the collecting society they want to use and also encourage collecting societies to offer a pan-EU license to music distributors.

Artists, supported by most MEPs, ask from the EC to regulate the online music market ensuring that CRMs provide a diversified range of music products, arguing that the present approach does not encourage niche and local markets. In their opinion, big CRMs will withdraw the successful international music products from the national CRMs which would therefore lose audience and which have a significant role in promoting and developing local talents. Already, some publishers such as EMI have started withdrawing the repertoires in English from some smaller CRMs.

Industry officials also say that the guidelines could become useless in case Universal Music Group which is the world's biggest music publisher decides to use only one collective society or even none at all.

In this sense, Universal's general counsel, Richard Constant said: "As we try to move into a digital world, we are held back by antiquated licensing practices. Europe is lagging behind (...) The recommendation is fundamentally flawed. We are still having to go to each society in each country for overpriced licenses."

Barroso rules out quick decision on online music market (9.12.2007)
http://euobserver.com/9/25302/?rk=1

EU exec stays above online music rights fray (7.12.2007)
http://www.news.com/2100-1028_3-6221934.html

EDRI-gram: Music: commission wants 1 internet clearing house (14.07.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.14/music