RIAA Seeks Royalties From Radio

SierraPete writes "First it was Napster; then it was Internet radio; then it was little girls, grandmothers, and dead people. But now our friends at the RIAA are going decidedly low-tech. The LA Times reports that the RIAA wants royalties from radio stations. 70 years ago Congress exempted radio stations from paying royalties to performers and labels because radio helps sell music. But since the labels that make up the RIAA are not getting the cash they desire through sales of CDs, and since Internet and satellite broadcasters are forced to cough up cash to their racket, now the RIAA wants terrestrial radio to pay up as well."

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Radio pays performance right in US

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Just not to RIAA, they pay the writers of the songs through ASCAP, which is like the song writer's version of the RIAA. I worked for a guy who wrote a song that actually got some air time on the radio, and he eventually got some checks in the mail. Note that artists who write their own songs actually make money when they are played on the radio, too, but the ones that don't, don't make any money from radio play.

See: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,7 89776,00.html

Great is ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). To ASCAP belong about 1,450 composers and writers and about 130 music publishing houses in the U. S. ASCAP holds the performance rights to their works. ASCAP collects royalties for its members, deducts about 20% for operating overhead, 10% more for the 20 foreign performing-rights societies with which it is affiliated. What is left is allocated, 50-50, between composers and writers and publishers. Distribution to individuals is arbitrary, based not upon number of performances but upon ASCAP's fixed ratings.

Radio, the juiciest source of ASCAP royalties, pays the society monthly on a contract basis, muttering horrible epithets. The present contracts, under which individual stations pay 5% of net receipts plus varying fees, networks pay nothing, expire next December. Last month ASCAP revealed the terms of the next contract: 3%-5% for individual stations, 7½% for the networks. Radio paid a total of $4,300,000 last year, would pay as high as $8,500,000 (its own estimate) in 1941. Last week the two major networks, CBS and NBC, gave their answer: nothing doing. For the first time they had a weapon with which to hit back.

Founded last fall, with stock owned by broadcasters, was Broadcast Music Inc., a music pool intended to rival ASCAP (TIME, Sept. 25). Last week B.M.I, issued its first catalogue: six songs, (sample: We Would Make Beautiful Music Together) which to many a broadcaster sounded sweeter than any of ASCAP's.