GoodNoise heeft een licentie gekregen van de National Music Publishers' Association om mp3 songs aan te bieden op het internet. Dat gebeurt nu natuurlijk ook al, maar dan illegaal.
Under the licence, the number of songs downloaded from GoodNoise and affiliated sites will be regularly totalled and, on the basis of that figure, a so-called 'mechanical licence' fee will be paid to the HFA a large proportion of which will then be passed on to publisher of those songs.
A mechanical licence specifically permits the duplication of music onto a physical medium (the current legislation counts digital delivery as physical duplication), as opposed to granting a public playback licence.
Essentially, the agreement between the HFA and GoodNoise establishes that fact the MP3 is as valid a music delivery mechanism as CD, LP and cassette. GoodNoise says it was already paying mechanical licence fees to its 15,000-odd music publishers on an individual basis -- what's important about the new deal is that it plugs GoodNoise, and thus MP3, into a major part of the mainstream music industry.
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