The battle to increase royalties paid to songwriters by music-streaming companies like Pandora and Spotify got a little more heated on Thursday when the world’s No. 1 music publisher threatened to pull out of an industry performance rights group.
Sony/ATV Chief Executive Martin Bandier, in a letter to his songwriters, said he might pull out of ASCAP/BMI so he could better fight for higher streaming royalties.
Under the current outdated court-monitored royalties schedule, songwriters split just 3.8 percent of revenue from all streaming companies — one-twelfth of what music labels and artists receive.
They are paid based on how many times their song is streamed.
The royalty rate from downloaded songs is higher — but as music lovers consume less music via download and more from streaming, songwriters have seen their income pinched.
For example, Desmond Child, who wrote “Living on a Prayer,” got a check for just $110 for 6 million streams on Pandora in the first quarter of 2014, while Linda Perry, who wrote “Beautiful,” got a check for $349 after her song was streamed 13 million times over the same three-month period, Bandier told The Post.
The royalty schedule was last amended in 2001 — before streaming music came into wide use.
The industry has tried unsuccessfully to get the government to increase streaming royalties.
The Justice Department is reviewing the matter.
Sony/ATV had previously withdrawn digital rights from ASCAP/BMI — and then struck a more lucrative deal with Apple and Pandora.
Apple now pays Sony/ATV a royalty of 10 percent.
Bandier’s letter was prompted by a federal court ruling last year that music publishers couldn’t selectively pull digital rights and had to be either all in or all out.
“The streaming rate they [streaming firms] pay is woefully inadequate,” Bandier wrote in the letter.
The DoJ public comment period runs through Aug. 6.