Posted on 06/04/2009 11:58:43 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
Edited on 06/04/2009 12:01:38 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
The National Association of Broadcasters said Wednesday that a majority of U.S. House members are now opposed to imposing new fees on radio stations to pay performance artists.
Such a bill passed the House Judiciary Committee last month, but the NAB hopes the show of opposition will prevent it from being brought to the House floor for a debate and vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office is monitoring support for the issue but officials there said the speaker has no immediate plan to take action.
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Overreaching music industry ping
All media should be charged the same way. Terrestrial over the air radio shouldn't have an advantage over other transmission methods. Either they all pay the singers' royalties or none should. Funny, I don't remember the NAB being upset about internet broadcasters being nailed by this a few years ago which caused many or even most to go out of business.
Left of the Dial interests would’ve been exempted from these payments even though stations like the Pacifica network use music programs to generate the needed donations to fund programs like Amy Goodman’s Democrazy Now.
Big Media has successfully lobbied to change our recording laws, copyright extension laws, etc.
They've made billions on works that should already have been in the public domain for generations. The artists are still dying without receiving the moneys collected in their name by their labels.
I can't see any reason to open a new revenue stream to the labels that they were never entitled to in the past just because their worn out business model is no longer working for them (they needed a new “CD” to convince millions to buy back music they'd already bought all their lives at inflated prices, the industry got busted for price fixing CDs far above manufacturing costs, it was gouging by charging more than a cassette which was actually more expensive to produce).
Even today you can buy DVDs of movies that cost millions to make for less than the price of a CD (because the industry still wants to expand the notion of building a home library of video). The works paid for their production costs long ago.
The older works are what keeps the industry solvent.
The big reason for that is that the CD is generally the only revenue stream from the production and advertising for that piece of music. For a DVD, you have either theater receipts (for movies) or advertising (for television) as the primary revenue to pay for production of the movie/show. DVD sales are just gravy on top of that.
How much longer to pay off those recording sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s?
The level of greed is insane and driven by their insane money grubbing lawyers. It is all about the music industry lawyers. The biz sucks these days so they’re looking for new ways to line their pockets
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