There’s an interesting aspect to the Allman Brother’s recent suit against Universal. (Here’s the story from Billboard; link via the Daily Swarm.) The front line in royalty disputes in the digital age is whether processes like streaming or selling a song digitally are equivalent to a traditional sale (on which the royalty rate might be roughly ten percent of wholesale) or a traditional licensing (say, for a movie soundtrack, where the label and artist might split the one-time proceeds equally).

Here’s how Billboard describes the sticking point in the Allmans’ suit:

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, said UMG [Universal Music Group, which bought up Polygram, which distributed Phil Walden’s Capricorn] “refuses to pay Plaintiffs at the correct royalty rate for its digital exploitation of the Capricorn Masters,” including from compact discs, digital downloads and ringtones.

The agreement dated back to a 1985 agreement between the band and Polygram, which Universal bought, that said the band would be paid half of profits from the sale of records by third parties such as Apple’s iTunes or any other commercial usage not specified in the agreement, the lawsuit said.

The story is somewhat unclear—there was no iTunes in 1985. The story also says part of the suit is about CD sales, which were already around in 1985, so it’s difficult to believe the dispute is about the royalty rate on those. And, finally, the story could just be a poor encapsulation of standard industry boilerplate. But as written it looks like the band had the prescience to sign a contract, way back then, that gave them a clear claim of a 50 percent share of, in effect, new media exploitation.