Posted on 10/16/2009 1:53:18 PM PDT by a fool in paradise
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill to require radio stations to pay royalties to performers when their music is aired, a top priority for the recording industry.
The Senate committee vote marks the furthest congressional progress yet for the measure, although it is still far from becoming law.
Broadcast radio stations now pay song royalties to songwriters and producers, but they don't pay performance fees for playing the artists' music.
In contrast, cable, satellite and Internet radio pay performance royalties.
Under the bill, large radio companies such as Clear Channel Communications Inc. and Cox Radio Inc. would be required to pay negotiated royalties to performers for playing their music on the air.
The measure includes features to accommodate financial woes of smaller broadcasters. Broadcasters making less than $50,000 a year could elect to pay $100 as a flat fee to play all the music they want. Midsize stations also would have flat-fee royalty options on a tiered basis...
The National Association of Broadcasters has lobbied aggressively against the bill and has garnered enough members in the House to stop the bill from becoming law.
The NAB argues that performers receive free promotions worth millions when their music airs on the radio, and argue that the extra cost for the royalties would be devastating to their businesses.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
And notice that "non-profit" left of the dial stations like Pacifica and NPR that use music to raise donation contributions will be largely exempted from paying this.
Sing PING
Satellite has been driving the royalty road since the beginning, why not everyone? The NAB was successful in scamming the public and artists for years, now it’s payday.
More room on the dial for conservative talk radio.
I don’t like the idea of the industry double-dipping stations (that’s what BMI/ASCAP fees are for). But most of what passes for ‘music’ today should be left by the side of the road in any event.
The people who are really mad about this are the owners of small stations that serve minorities, particularly blacks. They are are going to get screwed.
Many performers say they would rather see their records given away for free, as they make their money in live venues.
I have no problem at all with performers getting paid for use of their music.
As mentioned, writers get paid and someone like Paul Anka could retire nicely just on the royalties he got from The Tonight Show theme. Why not performers? I am not a performer, but I use music in my business and I pay for all of it.
In the beginning, money was in sheet music, not performance.
Song pluggers WANTED their songs to be sung by everyone so that people would buy the sheet music (at 50 cents per...).
They would pay performers to sing them in vaudeville, they would put plants in the audience to sing along, and they would pay shills to sing them at the corner bar (in the age before juke boxes).
When records first came out you didn’t have to pay the songwriter to record the song.
And when radio first came out there was no “payment” to the labels, publisher, or singer. Record companies even made it a practice of giving their records to stations for free so that they would get shelf space knowing that the other labels were also giving product, it was considered impossible to believe that the stations would actually go out and buy some recordings if they didn’t get them for free. The labels knew that the station broadcast was providing promotion of their songs.
And now the industry tries to pretend that they didn’t benefit from this business arrangement.
The music industry has done horrible things to American copyright law over the past century.
Warner Brothers has discussed an alternate business model where they will give away the recordings (digital downloads) and take a cut of all of a performer/celebrity’s earnings (endorsement, publishing, t-shirts, concerts, everything).
Since Time-Life-Warner-Turner is in a position (book, magazine, tv programming) position to promote their own artists (ABC’s Good Morning America does this with Disney films for example) they can make or break an act. And it falls outside of the scope of what the FCC bothers with (there is no disclosure at the time of the promotion, “oh by the way, we own this record label...”).
Judge Rejects Ringtone Lawsuit Against Verizon (music industry wants more money)
PC World ^ | Oct 16, 2009 9:00 am | Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2364180/posts?page=1
Pay per ring...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.