State radio delivers copyright-protecting report

BEIJING - China's state radio station on Wednesday delivered to the Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC) a report detailing its use of music products in 2012.

At a hand-over ceremony in Beijing, Wang Qiu, head of China National Radio (CNR), passed the report to MCSC vice chairman Qu Jingming, marking the first such introduction to China's radio industry.

The report records the exact use of music products in CNR's more than 7,000 hours of programs last year, including copyright information such as the lyricist and composer, and the time and frequency of use, said Wang.

It will help the MCSC to monitor and charge the radio station based on its use of music works and distribute relevant copyright fees to various music producers, according to the CNR chief.

Under music copyright payment regulations enforced since January 2010, radio stations are obligated to pay for using music products and offer a report explaining their exact use of the music.

However, no station has performed the latter obligation in the past three years and the regulations do not list any punishment for the failure.

"CNR has served as a great model in the industry for music copyright protection," said Lei Lei, vice chairwoman of the MCSC.

It is a hard task for radios stations to make an exact count of their use of music products even in countries with a high copyright management level, said Tang Zhaozhi, an official with the National Copyright Administration.

"The report embodies CNR's respect for the legitimate rights and interests of music authors and serves as an example of sound cooperation between radio stations and music copyright regulators in effective copyright protection," said Tang.

China's music industry has been badly hit by free online music services and rampant piracy .

It has 400 million Internet users listening to and downloading online music, mostly for free.

According to China Audio & Video Association statistics, the country's 2012 music copyright market was valued at more than 40 billion yuan (about 6.47 billion U.S. dollars). However, actual copyright revenue only amounted to 800 million yuan.