Designing Fees for Music Copyright Holders in Radio Services

This paper investigates which is the most desirable payment schedule, from a social welfare standpoint, for compensating IPR holders for music broadcast by radio stations. A model of a radio station that acts as a monopoly with respect to listeners and sells ads in a competitive market is presented. Two types of fees, ad valorem and per unit, are examined. Exploiting the similarity between taxes and fees, we extend results from taxation theory in two-sided markets to show that the case where only one side (i.e. advertisers) pays, while the other (the listeners) receives the service for free, di¤ers somewhat from the case thus far considered by the literature, in which both sides pay. The results mildly support the prevailing regulatory approach, based on ad valorem fees.