Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson Labels and publishers have long said they want to encourage the development of more legal music services, in part by creating a “one-stop shop” where entrepreneurs can license a huge collection of music at a set cost. The very need for some of these licensing schemes remains contested (Google and Amazon famously didn’t take licenses when they launched their own cloud storage systems for music, though Apple did for its iTunes Match), but the industry has worked with the Digital Media Alliance (DiMA) to develop five new types of statutory licenses that could simplify the process of rolling out music services when licenses are required. Cary Sherman of the RIAA, David Israelite of the National Music Publishers Association, and Lee Knife from DiMA argue that the new licenses are a key step forward in making legal services easier to create and more predictable to run. The opinions expressed here are their own. Say you have a great idea for a new kind of digital music service. You need some funding, so you pitch the idea to investors. All investors worth their salt will ask, “How much will the content cost?” Until now, it might have been difficult for such a digital music service to estimate the cost of licensing music from thousands of labels and publishers directly.

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Op-ed: New digital music licenses good for fans, entrepreneurs