Radio May Have To Pay To Play 407
devjj writes "Ars Technica reports that Congress is considering two bills that will remove the exemption terrestrial radio broadcasters currently enjoy that allows them to broadcast music without compensating the artists or labels for it. In the current dispensation only songwriters get paid. The National Association of Broadcasters is furious at the RIAA, which is pushing repeal of the exemptions, and has responded by agreeing that artists need better compensation — and is asking Congress to investigate modern recording contracts. "
This is an old tune: (Score:3, Funny)
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if revenue deserted you
Nobody knows where my moolah has gone
But total control left the same time
Why were they streaming these songs
Pay us or pay a big fine
It's my property and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if revenue deserted you
Then all my records keep dancing all night
But leave me alone for a while
'Til money's dancing in my wallet
I've got no reason to smile
It's my property and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if revenue deserted you
NAB and the listener just walked thru the door
Like a queen with her king
Oh what a birthday surprise
NAB's wearing his MP3 thing
It's my property and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if revenue deserted you
Oh-oh-oh It's my property and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to.....
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It's their Congress
They'll do what they want to
Do what they want to
But they'll never do it for you...
Re:This is an old tune: (Score:4, Funny)
You now owe $3,750 to Mercury Records and 1/10 of a cent to the songwriter Lesley Gore.
You've been served.
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write songs and don't have to produce albums it can be a pretty
cushy gig. You get income but you don't have to become indebted
to the labels for all of those recording costs.
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Tiny1877, there is a lawyer representing Metallica and their label knocking on your door for use of a song title without paying a royalty...
Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first read this article my only thought was "goodbye college radio"... but your point is so very true. This will shoot the 'AAs squarely in the foot. Radio stations can't afford to pay for music. Even ClearChannel etc won't pony up for this. This may just clear the way to get the forest of unwanted garbage music out of our face so we can see the few trees of good music that are out there!
Sorry, I'll come up with a better metaphor after my coffee...
-Vort
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well, we have college radio stations up in canada and up here broadcasters have to pay royalties to composers for play.
canada has an organization call 'socan [socan.ca]' that collects royalties from radio stations (among other places) and distributes them to artists. from socan's web page:
"[we collect] licence fees, as set by the Copyright Board of Canada, from anyone playing or broadcasting live or recorded music."
how those royalties ge
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Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Informative)
Terrestrial stations have so far been exempt from paying the performance royalties, but it looks like that may change.
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In-Studio Performances (Score:5, Interesting)
This is true for the radio single version of a song, but is not universally true. There will be some performances that are owned not by the record company but by the radio station. When an artist is on tour, drops by the local radio station to plug their album and performs an in-studio version of their song, that copyright can easily end up going to the radio station.
What passage of this bill might mean is that such recordings owned by the radio stations would become more important. You'd end up hearing more "exclusive tracks" and I can easily see radio stations deciding to play an artist or not based on their willingness to provide them with non-RIAA owned performances. And I can easily see radio stations in different markets setting up trade deals that would give them access to each other's in-studio performances.
At that point, I imagine the RIAA probably tries some sort of counter-shenanigans like stipulating in artists' contracts that they have to assign the copyright for all performances to their record company.
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you kidding? Who would buy that crap after actually hearing it?
No, they want you to pay and keep paying (Score:5, Insightful)
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They want to be paid every time anyone listens to their songs, and they want to be paid for every potential set of ears. Period.
They say their revenues have been slumping (or not growing as fast as they feel it should -- I'm not really sure), so they're looking to have the rules changed to make sure they get more money from everyone all the time.
Personally, I th
You can look forward to LOTS MORE (Score:4, Insightful)
The money train's coming to the end of the tracks boys. (No more snorting blow out of a naked hooker's navel.)
It may suck to be us for a little while, but Mullah Omar may be getting his wish after all: "A world without music."
The advertisers who are stuck paying for it all won't mind in the least. (Hell. Truck and beer and during a show about trucks and beer. What a winner!)
The audiences who are stuck with listening to it all won't mind in the least.
Look for the sale of hands-free headsets to go up so "Tucker Tom" can talk back to the radio because they'll have made room to the "Trucker Tom"s of the world.
The price we're stuck with for the **AAs is about to come crashing down because the broadcasters don't have to broadcast music.
Once the broadcasters are on the program, the audiences will realize that instead of wanting them just for their ears and their wallets, the broadcasters will want them for what the audience can contribute.
But the price structure will still be in place, like a bottle of foul tasting hangover remedy, to remind us all of the period in time when billions of pennies were siphoned from all of our pockets and drained into the vast bulging pockets of a very few.
We'll just have to call the music by some other name. (Its happened before, English didn't exist except as utterances spoken by Shakespeare and 'groked' by the audiences to his plays.)
No to sound apocalyptic, but its all coming to an end because its all going 'round again.
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Drop the yearly fee from say $5,000 down to $2,500. New artists/indie artists get played for free, since the radio doesn't want to pay for a band that could flop when they are expected to suceed (Like Zwan, or Flyleaf, or Paramore, etc). Then any band that goes platinum on a single record (or 750,000 of 2 albums, or some scale like that), then you can charge $.05 for each play. That builds-in a $2,500 allowance, or about 50,000 p
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well, we have college radio stations up in canada and up here broadcasters have to pay royalties to composers for play.
In the US I think the college/non-profit stations also pay the ASCAP [ascap.com] or BMI [bmi.com] but at a lower rate than the commercial stations [wikipedia.org].
I am assuming that SOCAN, ASCAP, and BMI don't have any connection with the RIAA. So now the RIAA wants a cut.
With personal mp3 players and streaming network does broadcast radio even have a future? At one time AM radio was _the_ method of listening to music. Today AM is mostly talk/news with FM being the music provider. I can see FM going to the talk/news format in the near future
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I haven't run across a single group doing Celtic music that's signed to a major label...
Although my tastes even in this niche genre seem to be rather narrow, so who knows, maybe some of the more mainstream groups have XD
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:4, Interesting)
Avoiding the RIAA is an option, and it's one I apparently started to take even before I was aware of it.
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Interesting)
Someday, there will be a thread about the RIAA without all this elitist bullshit. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH POP? I like meatloaf, bubblegum, McDonald's hamburgers, pizza, Mountain Dew, and pop music. Music is not the center of my life, nor is it the apex of the arts. It's enjoyable noise that makes my commute more pleasant. You don't like pop? Fine. The rest of the world does. Not because it's what's been forced down their throats, but because they didn't study enough to learn that they're not supposed to like it--whatever the fuck that means.
Go find a classical music snob and ask him what he thinks about the music you like. ("Radiohead? HA!") While you're at it, ask a chef what he thinks of your dinner selection, a car enthusiast what he thinks of your ride, and the unwashed masses of Slashdot about your operating environment and text editor of choice. Maybe send these folks [typepad.com] a picture of what you're wearing right now. There is no dispute concerning taste. [google.com] (And I refer to the Latin form of that phrase not because I'm a language snob but to make the point that this idea has been around for a long, long time.) And while you're out gathering all these opinions (as if they matter), I highly recommend hitting a bookstore (NOT a video store) and checking out High Fidelity. [wikipedia.org]
Note that this doesn't mean I like the RIAA's tactics, but that's unrelated to what they happen to sell. They could sell bottled water, or own baseball teams, or make operating systems and office suites--they'd behave the same way and they'd still be assholes for doing it.
Ask yourself this: pick any band you like. Imagine they get picked up by the RIAA. Does that make their music bad? Imagine they become unexpectedly, insanely popular and spawn a whole new world of music, Sprite ads, flannel-based fashion, and extreme sports. [wikipedia.org] Does that make their music bad?
If your reflex is to tell me "Nirvana really sucked, Pearl Jam and Soundagarden were the real geniuses" then you're missing my point--ignore the band I chose as an example. Just imagine any band you like in their place.
PS: I'm not picking on you in particular. I could have replied to any of a dozen posts in this thread.
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Funny)
I hate you.
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Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Funny)
Heresy.
All popular music is worthless. If anyone with a clean shirt and a decent haircut has heard of a band, then they're over-processed sellout pop shit for teenagers. It's a scientifically proven fact that the worth of a band is inversely proportional to the number of records they've sold. That's why The Beatles are the worst band in history and quality music peaked when G.G. Allin shoved a Sennheiser up his ass after a baked bean dinner.
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You are part of the problem. Good day.
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, has anyone mentioned that Nickleback sucks? No? Well then, FYI, Nickleback sucks.
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Secondly, Nickleback is distributed under a RIAA label. The problem that I think this community has with this is not that Nickleback (or Justin T or whomever) sucks or not, but that these bands get propped up artificially. They get publicity, promotion and notoriety that they wouldn't have if they were attempting to make it on me
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, I remember when I was 20 and an idealist...
How is a band intended to "get by on talent alone" when nobody can hear your music? There are about 50,000 bands in every state in the US. Why should any given person listen to any one of them over any other? It would take you years just to sit through the cruft to get to a single band worth following.
I give you Bjork as a prefect example of propped shit.
Bjork was part of one of these non-RIAA bands that people like you espouse. I'm sure if it was 1985 you'd be on here talking about how we should all be buying Sugarcubes albums and boycotting the RIAA. That's the problem with idealism; reality has a different dogma. She signed to a major label as soon as she was able to, and her fans continued to follow her regardless. Nothing much about the music changed that couldn't be attributed to 20 years worth of age. Only the label changed.
So when your favorite current indie band signs to a major, will you call them "artificially propped up"? Will their music suddenly suck? Will they suddenly be really boring live? No-talent hacks...
It's pretty ridiculous to indict an entire range of artists simply because of the record label they're signed to. Talk about blind stereotyping... that's supposedly what music idealists like yourself are so against.
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody asserts that the RIAA music sucks because their business practices are abhorrent/repugnant/unethical. Instead, the general assertion is that
- (a) the fact that the majority of RIAA music sucks, and
- (b) the fact that many find the RIAA's biz practices repellent
are not causal of each other in either direction, but are both symptomatic of (i.e. caused by)Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Interesting)
With all our modern technology, though, musicians could make money with only one or two guys helping them with distribution, even worldwide distribution, and take home a much larger percentage of the profit. As long as a quiet place to record the music can be located, even someone with almost no financial backing could potentially sell a lot of music. If only there weren't people fighting such ideas...
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when the artist starts getting big, somebody has to step in and help, and they have to get paid.
How about when the artists start getting big, they have to pay somebody else. Then the money flows from the artist to the support (distribution, marketing, etc) and the artist gets paid if there is any left over from an employer's standpoint. This will actually help keep things much more honest, and force artists to use the system that works (for distribution) instead of the broken ones.
This arrangement w
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
If people stop hearing new songs on the radio, then the RIAA will really see a dip in CD sales. This is just more proof that the RIAA is way out of touch with how the market works.
I had the same initial reaction, but then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the article is short. The actual text of the bill may include a pay-per-play option that would encourage stations to drop most RIAA-artist music while still retaining the ability to play a bit of it, on occasion. I don't know because I haven't read the bill so, as always, the devil's in the details.
Somehow, I doubt an RIAA-backed bill would include a sensible measure like this, though. Even they aren't stupid enough to shoot themselves in the foot like that. Are they?
Anybody got a link to the actual bill text?
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:3, Interesting)
They'll start charging more per-play for the top 40 stuff because they can.
That top 40 stuff will loose air time for the cheaper stuff
The cheaper stuff, with more air time, will become more popular, raising it's price to play...
rinse-repeat
Over all, I think this will ad variety to music played on the radio, as the companies are force, due to expenses, to play more obscure music.
Re:Good, maybe REAL artists will now have a chance (Score:2)
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Even if there were a ton of indie bands as good as bands with labels represented by RIAA (Muse, U2, Def Leppard, etc.), which there aren't, what you said wo
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This could actually help a little (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, this is a no-win case in Congress either way. With Republicans in the hands of big business and Democrats in the hands of Hollywood, the possibility of anyone looking out for the consumer is pretty much nil. Calls for reform usually only end up with even more onerous legislation [news.com].
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Agreed. Nothing like having Clear Channel and Newscorp on you side of an issue.
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Calls for reform usually take the form of:
The only thing that changes is who "I" and "me" refer to. Of course, that can change the type of reform quite a bit. Ultimately, the one with the money gets their reform. If we get rid of money as a factor, then the "new currency" would be something else I don't have. I
A good Idea (Score:2)
Big Labels committing suicide? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not seeing the forest for the trees... (Score:5, Insightful)
sigh :( (Score:2)
Poetic justice, Ouruboros-style (Score:2)
Sad that we couldn't have had clear-thinking political leadership that weren't whores to special interests, to kill it as it should have been killed.
But as long as they end up attacking themselves out of existence, I guess I shouldn't complain too much.
To Quote (Score:2)
Silver lining? (Score:2)
But then again perhaps this will herald the advent of "indie music" (i.e., anything not produced by an RIAA label) on the radio.
Record labels or Clear Channel and their ilk, who to root against? A pox on both their houses.
-mcgr
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Go head and tax the crap out of radio. The music industry is falling apart fast, and anything that hastens the fall is a good thing.
If only (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think they think this is cunning, they see declining CD sales, and think they can squeeze radio stations to make
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* "The current draft sets up a scheme where commercial broadcasters pay a flat yearly f
What happened to the good old days of payola... (Score:2)
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They want a refund.
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Harry Shearer eulogizing on the "genius" of the departed Sonny Bono (a promoter as well as a performer) after his skiing into a tree: "How much 'genius' does it take to meet on Monday morning to decide how to spread the payola around?"
Randi Rhodes: "Being a disk jockey, you know the _really_ cool promos -- one ones that came with the little packet of cocaine."
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It doesn't matter at all (Score:5, Informative)
See The New Yorker [newyorker.com] for more information.
All the RIAA is going to do is find a way to pay the radio stations what they pay in royalties, and then charge that cost back to the artists via some "promotional fee" or other such garbage.
The only solution to getting artists paid is the death of the RIAA and its component companies.
Welcome to the end of modern radio! (Score:2)
Two man enter, one man leave! (Score:2)
Allez!
Good (Score:2)
Finally... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comercial Radio (Score:2)
I can hear the new song coming... (Score:5, Funny)
Coming soon to a radio station near you! Oh, wait...
Business as usual (Score:2, Insightful)
Does anyone still listen? (Score:3, Informative)
I think the bigger story here is how terrestrial radio broadcasters utterly squandered a franchise.
More commercials = lame (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess I am ahead of the curve... (Score:2)
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The road to extermination (Score:2, Funny)
But I did not care, as I never liked Napster
Then they went after Kaazaa
But I did not care, as I did not like Kaazaa either
Then they went after the torrents
But I did not care, as I only use torrents for free software
Then they went after radio
But I did not care, as I never listen to radio anyway
Then they came after me for singing while in the shower
And there was nobody else to care, as music had been exterminated from Earth
I thought the purpose of (music) radio (Score:3, Insightful)
RIAA is very shrewd. (Score:4, Interesting)
* It's a strike against attempts to relieve webcasters of RIAA payment.
* If it is enacted, the RIAA (SoundSource) ends up collecting all the royalties
* Which means they can screw non-members out, furthering their stranglehold.
* They'll still pay for radio pay, it's just that part of the payment will be an exemption
from royalties, reducing their direct costs.
* Which will further increase the cost of non-RIAA music compared to RIAA music
* Particularly since the exempt music will still be counted in whatever formula they use to
distribute collected royalties, thus screwing non-RIAA artists more.
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In a gutsy move, the NAB agrees. Artists do deserve better compensation, and so the NAB respectfully suggests that Congress examine the notorious world of major label contracts. Should the committee not know where to begin, NAB President David Rehr offers seven helpful suggestions.
"Over the years, how much did the various record labels benefit financially from the sales of the performer witnesses at the Ju
Are they scared? (Score:2)
I was willing to give the RIAA the benefit of the doubt about the copyright lawsuits, but to me this situation lends itself to an industry that is scared stupid about its future. What I don't think they understand is that radio is a semi-safe way to get people exposed to music. If they charge radio stations to play, that means radio stations either dry up or have to get more ad revenue to pay for
Fuck the RIAA. (Score:2)
Their business model is obsolete and falling apart, so now they're trying to sleaze their way into more revenue any way they can. Last week they decided that, legal precedent and their own claims notwithstanding, that people don't have the right to backup their CDs after all [slashdot.org]. Now they're trying to shake down radio stations that have been bringing them a constant flow of revenue for decades.
Screw these bastards. We--meaning musicians, music listene
this is wonderful (Score:3, Insightful)
the eventual nirvana, of course, is completely free digital music
artists get paid for concerts, and advertising deals, no more. and this represents no decrease in filthy lucre for the artists, since in today's paradigm they don't get that much for recordings anyway: the music cartels screw them for pennies
the internet simply represents where people find new bands (rather than the radio, which is controlled, the internet is free), and also represents where they will get their free recordings, which artists will distribute themselves
the music companies?
sorry, no room for them in such a world
as if this were somehow a bad thing, in any way
you do not cry for the jobs of chimney sweeps, horseshoe blacksmiths, and cabin boys that progress has rendered obsolete
you certainly don't have to cry for the historical ireelevancy and extinction of music conglomerates
like any dying dinosaur, they flail about like a great horrible wounded beast, lashing out at everyone and everything they can
lay low, wait, and in due time their coffers will be dry, and they will dead, and not threaten our culture any more with their insane need to preserve a defunct business model based on distributing CDs and tapes, in a world of tcp/ip
Sure, lets legislate the fall of indy radio (Score:2, Interesting)
We automatically assume that Clear Channel will fight this to the ground and it goes without saying that they certainly won't have any positive PR on it and the only thing we will hear are grumbles about Big Government.
Instead Clear Channel will go into a licensing agreemen
old media dead (Score:4, Interesting)
So does it matter that radio will have to pay? Not to the listener. The reason is that old media exists to provide filler content between ads. The filler content sole purpose is to attract the consumer. So, sports are ideal as it soap operas for boys watch, and it is usually watched live. Radio is ideal because most people have radios in their car where the people are a captive audience, and radio provides a unique ability to meet local markets. Newspaper have a unique ability and infrastructure to develop, design, print, and deliver ad campaigns. The sophisticated abilities of old media just do not yet exist on the internet.
The danger with the pay to play is that will increase costs so that advertising cannot support the media. This is no danger to most consumers. If local radio commercial fails, it just means that those who want that kind radio will have to pay for satellite service. This is likely the end game that many are hoping for, as satellite radio can probably bear the payments more easily. This means that many frequencies will be be free to transmit idie content from small radio stations. Certainly no one here thinks that is a bad thing.
Ooooh! This could backfire on the RIAA bigtime. (Score:2)
I think the artist should get a much larger cut, personally, but the internet might render a lot of the old stuff moot eventually in any case. Who needs a recording contract when you can record your music (or other works) digitally and stick them on a web site?
Comopensation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again, it would suck for indie labels that might not be able to afford to pay to broadcast. And you'd end with an even smaller subset of music being played on the radio.
How about a compromise. Record labels admit that radio play is free advertising. And Radio stations continue to get revenue from advertsing.
-matthew
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Ok, seriously... the radio exemption is sound marketing and worked as such for years. (Hint --
Re:Paying others to advertise for them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, different arguments can be made as to what a consumer buys when he purchases a CD. The music itself, certainly - but he can already listen to that for free by waiting for it to appear on the radio. In my opinion, what the consumer buys when he buys a CD is choice - the choice to listen to a particular song whenever he wishes rather than waiting for it to appear whenever a radio station plays it. The radio then becomes the advertisement for this purchase.
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CDs are the product the bands' labels want you to buy and not that cheap to produce.
Merchandising is relatively pricy to produce and tends not to work as an advertisement (tour dates are in the past; you don't hear what the band sounds like).
Playing single songs on the radio, however, is an extremely cheap way to advertise. Listeners get to hear what one song of the respective band sounds like but the listening stays more or less limi
Re:Paying others to advertise for them? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but you're displaying a fundamental lack of understanding about how radio works (from a financial point of view), along with a lack of knowledge of radio history. Understandable, because no one knows this stuff anymore except for telecom geeks.
Playing music over the radio has, since it's inception, been about advertising to promote sales of music (records, sheet music), advertising to promote attendance at live events, and to provide programming to attract listeners for, of course, advertising other goods and services. In the last case, think of how flowers use nectar to attract bees. Giving away nectar is just a cost of doing business if you want to be polinated.
Of course, it isn't a perfect analogy, because unlike flowers, radio stations aren't producing what they're giving away.
What radio explicitely hasn't been is a revenue source for song performers. Song writers, absolutely. I'll leave it up to you to look up the ASCAP / BMI controversy of 1939/1940.
In fact, what is amazing about this is that, were the RIAA's proposal to be adopted, it would end up setting up a system exactly the opposite of the Payola scandal, where record producers paid / bribed radio station employees and execs to play records [history-of-rock.com].
I also have to wondeder what ASCAP and BMI will think of this. If this proposal results in a drop in radio play, then payments to songwriters (as opposed to song performers) will fall.
Oh, and this could definitely blow up in the RIAA's face. Clear Channel, Infinity and the like are notorious for being very, very tough business people. If this proposal goes through, and if they aren't able to negotiate a miniscule enough rate per play, I wouldn't put it past them to start buying up the larger RIAA members, just to get their music catalogs. Would there be anti-trust implications? Sure. Would it be worth a few tens of millions here or there to try. Absolutely.
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With music there's a little rhythm to put a kick in your step, and some melodies to put a smile on your face.
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Here is the link to the Live Music Archive [archive.org] in case anyone is interested.
Re:IMO listenning to music is overrated anyway (Score:4, Funny)
Wow. You had me worried, then I saw "cream" at the end of that.