At the National Music Publishers Assn. annual meeting yesterday in New York City, RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman told attendees that the RIAA and NMPA were working together to establish a micro-licensing vehicle that would make it easier for occasional users of music to get proper licensing at a reasonable rate.

He said that the organization had sent out requests for information to companies who might be able to offer micro-licensing platforms.

“So many uses of music go unlicensed, and it’s a lost opportunity in so many ways,” he said. “It’s obviously lost revenue. The fact is that so many businesses and individuals use music to enhance their products, their services, their events, shows music’s value.  We aren’t talking about music-centric businesses — those are taken care of. We’re talking about the app developer who wants to use a clip of music in the background. Or the wedding videographer who wants to include music in his videos. Or the company that wants to use music in presentations at corporate retreats.”

Many of these businesses want licenses, but haven’t a clue how to get them, he said, adding, “And we haven’t done a very good job of making it easy for them. Technology now makes it feasible to offer easy-to-get licenses for all our music, for all kinds of uses; and creating a market for that could mean many millions of dollars of new revenue each year.

“Importantly, both labels and publishers will be building this opportunity together,” he reiterated.

“Our collective future is looking brighter.  And our future is collective. Never before have the interests of record companies and publishers been more closely aligned. Never before have we been as interdependent as we are right now. We’re in this together.” [Billboard.biz]