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NEW YORK: A federal district court in New York ruled Thursday that online media service providers AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo must pay a reasonable fees to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for the music streamed and distributed on their sites.

Currently these companies don’t pay any dividends to ASCAP which will be determined by the court.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will now determine appropriate fees for AOL, RealNetworks, and Yahoo, all of which have applied for ASCAP licenses but have not been able to agree upon fees. The total payments to the group, which represents over 320,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers–not record labels–could reach $100 million. (Click here for a PDF of the court’s decision.)

To download court’s decision in PDF format please click here.

According to ASCAP President Marilyn Bergman:

The court’s finding represents a major step toward proper valuation of the music contributions of songwriters, composers and publishers to these types of online businesses.

It is critical that these organizations share a reasonable portion of their sizable revenues with those of us whose content attracts audiences and, ultimately, helps to make their businesses viable. This decision will go a long way toward protecting the ability of songwriters and composers to be compensated fairly as the use of musical works online continues to grow.

The license fees would cover music distributed as early as July 1, 2002, and then up through the end of 2009.