Streaming music in your virtual fitness classes
Emailed on April 17th 2020 in The Friday Forward
Many boutique fitness clubs have taken to online live streams as a way to keep their classes and communities active and engaged during mandatory shutdowns.
An oft-overlooked challenge from this shift is music streaming rights.
In March 2019, a group of 10 music publishers belonging to the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) sued Peloton—the on-demand fitness streaming company—for $150 million for allegedly violating music copyright law. According to the music publishers, Peloton failed to obtain synchronization rights (sync rights) for more than 1,000 songs that it has used in its streaming fitness classes over the years.
The problem? Sync rights, the rights to sync music with visual content, are different from typical music licensing fees clubs are familiar with. Typical licensing fees are consolidated to two performing rights organizations (BMI and ASCAP) while sync rights can be split across multiple publishing houses for even one song.
For example, Beyonce's "Hold Up" copyright is held by 8 different publishers.
The solution? Before you sync your new online stream with your favorite tunes, consider creating a playlist on a streaming service like Spotify to share with your members instead. Have them start the playlist at the start of the class, and all music streaming is covered under Spotify's licensing fees - leaving you to navigate only the quality of your livestream.