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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."
I truly hope they get what they want, it seems like the only thing that could possibly take down Clear Channel.
This would basically ruin both CC and the RIAA. Without the radio telling the masses what to like, CD sales are doomed.
-- lol pwned
"Mary Wilson, who with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard formed the original Supremes, said the exemption was unfair and forced older musicians to continue touring to pay their bills."
Yeah because they should be allowed to sit around all day earning money just because they are so great.
Pfff, it won't fly. The radio industry is too strong collectively for this to work. Plus also how could they even get close to having this accepted internationally?
And no, I couldn't give a shit what my karma is.
One of 2 things will probably happen:
1) RIAA offends the courts by trying to reverse Congress and fails, and loses some steam and (more) public credibility (with those who think they have any).
2) RIAA bribes the right people and that law gets reversed, which then costs our country its music-playing radio stations and the music industry loses the majority of its sales.
I'm failing to see a down side....
I'd like to see all radio stations play only independent music for one day. See how the RIAA likes that..
...when reality and The Onion collide: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27696
This is great news. There are only like 2 big radio conglomerates out there. They typically replay the same crap that the labels spoon feed them over and over again. Now, let's say they have to PAY to play that crap. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe play local stuff that doesn't cost a dime? Maybe it makes sense to play those albums that are not covered by the RIAA?
The best part is that if this is instituted it must be instituted across the board. They can't give radio stations breaks on a specific song over another. If they do, then this is payola. You can't pay radio stations to play your song. A discount on royalties is the same as paying them. Maybe we might hear some variety on the radio.
Again, another strategy not thought out to the logical conclusion.
From TFA:
Mary Wilson, who with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard formed the original Supremes, said the exemption was unfair and forced older musicians to continue touring to pay their bills.
Yes, it's unfair that people are forced to work to pay their bills. There should be free money for all with no incentive to work. In a perfect world, congress should force everyone to pay record companies money, so record companies could distribute the wealth in whatever way they see fit.
So wait, the law acknowledges that radio infringing on the rights of musicians is okay because it encourages people to buy the music. However illegally downloading it doesn't do this? WTF? How are the two different. I understand the RIAA's logic here. If one has a particular rule then the other should as well. Now having said that, I think the RIAA and I differ on which rule should be moved to which system ;)
They are attacking their own advertisers now. Most people purchase music after hearing it, which they usually hear it on the radio. Lets fast forward 5 years pretending this is successful. Radio stations are now put out of business because of lawsuits or refusal to pay the RIAA's ransom so as CD sales continue to fall; that will leave the RIAA scratching their heads wondering why, when they just killed their most wide spread advertising tool.
Whats next? Suing stores that play music inside for shoppers?
This will be the last nail in their coffins. I do not need to explain why, it is abvious for any person with a little sence.
Of course, RIAA has bacome senceless long ago and its own worse enemy.
Like the old fable of the scorpion and the frog.
A scorpion asks a frog for help crossing a river. Intimidated by the scorpion's prominent stinger, the frog demurs.
``Don't be scared,'' the scorpion says. ``If something happens to you, I'll drown.'' Moved by this logic, the frog puts the scorpion on his back and wades into the river. Half way across, the scorpion stings the frog.
The dying frog croaks, ``How could you -- you know that you'll drown?''
``It's my nature,'' gasps the sinking scorpion.
Sting the radios, RIAA, and sink alone. They will start promoting indie labels.
A long time ago my father (a construction worker) told me why you didn't see many houses made out of brick in California. Seems the bricklayer's union became way, way too successful and powerful, demanding more and more pay up to the point where people couldn't afford brick construction any more and moved to frame and plasterboard houses with tar shingle roofs (this was back in the early 50's). Basically they priced themselves out of the market, but they couldn't roll back their demands due to the nature of the organisation, and their leaders chose economic death over political death as an organisation because people are funny that way.
As Hawkeye once said, the operation was a success but the patient died.
Funny thing though, the frame houses seemed to flex a bit but the brick houses tended to rubble during earthquakes, lovely Aesopian message there.
Off-topic? No, just a very extended metaphor. The RIAA will eventually have absolute control over a commodity that absolutely nobody will buy. And when they start annoying Congressmen more than their lobbyists are worth by stepping outside the bounds of their anointed playing field, they're going to get slapped down hard. Nobody has a right to make money, the market has to be there, and RIAA is killing the goose.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
....and although I am usually in a particularly bad disposition against most anything the RIAA has been doing recently.
I think that at the very least there is something to be said for this. If anything, the radio stations are racking up
income hand over fist from all of those insipid commercials we are forced to listen to, and it would only seem fair
that besides the songwriters and publishers (who are justly being compensated), the owners of the sound recordings
also get a piece of that income, which wouldn't affect talk radio, news and sports stations, but mostly for those stations
who have a 'music format', said music being the main reason they are able to remain in business.
This exemption business was something that was passed more than a half-century ago, originally allowed to support the massive investment
buildout in infrastructure which radio had to go through, long since recouped, and the fact that it still stands today shows the colossal power
of the lobby behind the stations/conglomerates such as Clear Channel.
This makes the RIAA's position that Internet broadcasters have to pay a bit more sensible, although totally irrelevant to the reality of the Internet.
Being that records are not selling that much anymore, and that people still listen to terrestrial radio quite a bit, it would make sense that some
of the income stream commercial radio is deriving from music should be used to give people an incentive to create more of the same material
the stations are using to earn income with.
I really don't see what's far-fetched or ludicrous about this; there should however be exemptions for not-for-profit, college radios, and low-power transmitters.
Z.
From the summary: 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.
I mean seriously. Are these people hungry? Are they homeless? Are they unable to pay their bills? Is their mansion really too small?
I ran into a former owner of a CD store in a college town a few years ago, and she said that she had to close down because CDs were not selling, so she sold the business, and started another one. She said explicitly that downloads hurt her bottom line, but oh well, times change, and she had to change with the times.
I mean, how many steam engine engineers are trying to sue these new fangled gasoline, oil, diesel, electric, fuel cell, etc engineers? Or their customers, or their kids, or dead people?
To me, this is some kind of psychological or socioligical problem that is not properly addressed as such, and the bottom line is that _everybody_ is losing because of it. The real problem is that the government is an accessory to their psychological/sociological problems, because I guess they have the same issues.
Why isn't the government or anybody concerned about real issues like national debt, health care (oxymoron) reform, energy costs, housing costs, and the stuff that actually affects real people that are real problems. I mean, if nobody bought a 1970s technology like a CD is ever again, would it really be a big deal?
Is this kind of sociopathy just "normal" when a society is collapsing on itself? Does anybody know what the real issues are here? This is a control/powertrip thing that makes no sense.
I haven't heard a better idea in a long time.
RIAA has to fight it out with Clear Channel, which definitely has the resources to fight them.
This will finally get public attention on copyright, royalties, and how aggressively the RIAA has been acting for the past several years. Most people don't know much about internet radio, but they know plenty about the noise box that keeps them entertained as they drive to and from work.
Then, if the RIAA are successful, they'll be making unsigned and non-RIAA artists who will happily sign royalty-free contracts, far more attractive to radio stations. More radio play, means more sales, which means real competition with RIAA.
I see a huge upside, and very little downside, for the public.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You won't be able to give your music away in the future. Giving the MAFIAA a new revenue stream only gives them more money to do more harm. The only place to stop them is at the voting booth.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The RIAA's member labels already collect royalties for songs played on the radio. Radio is not exempt from those royalties - in fact, they usually make up the majority of the income a recording produces, now that songs get played over and over, forever, in our pop/classic corporate "rock" broadcast culture.
Those "performance" royalties are collected by whichever agency represents an artist who wrote the songs: BMI, ASCAP are the biggest, the remaining <10% of artists are represented by a couple of "big little" agencies, and then a bunch of really little ones. But those agencies are at least as corrupt as the record labels which collect sales income, then find every excuse to count "expenses" before returning the minimum (if any) share of "profit" to the artists who made the record. Very little of the performance royalty is paid to the artists, and the return to them is pretty random.
This formula is also worked against the rounding effect of the sampling for determining royalty payments: either one "representative" hour a day, or one "representative" day a week is usually used, which of course means only the most popular artists have a chance of registering in a sample and getting paid. Since the most popular artists get played so much more (the same goddamn song, year after year, too), only the biggest artists get cut in. To make it even worse, the distribution of top artists in the "random" sample is used to divide the royalty collected from radio stations which pay a subscription fee as if they're playing every artist. So in effect those biggest artists are collecting the share of the littler artists who do get played, but who get rounded down. Those "rarities" and "from the vault's back wall" bands they're playing to keep you listening to the classic rock station so it sounds "fresh", with occasional "new" (30 year old) songs, all get lost in the rounding down of the sampling process. So their most valuable songs return the least share of the royalties to their artists.
And of course the BMI/ASCAP/etc collection agencies just underreport plays and percentages to the artists. I have friends in bands which registered half their artists with BMI, the other half with ASCAP, to see which paid better. For some bands BMI paid their half more, for other bands ASCAP paid their half more, sometimes 5-10x different, when they should all have paid the same. Then, since artists are flaky and move around & disappear on benders (or OD), the agencies often collect money they "don't know how to pay", so they just keep it. This also happens whenever there's the slightest possibility that a contract disagreement or unknown might allow different interpretations of how much should go in the check.
All of those scams are also fed back into the radio station's decicisions of how much to play (and promote) which songs. Since there's money attached, money gets spent on those deciders to influence which songs are played when. And to influence which "random" hour/day is picked to report who gets how much.
So now the RIAA wants to get in on the act. And of course they'll charge (mostly independent) streaming radio station even more than they charge (nearly all corporate) broadcast radio stations. Right when the Copyright Office has just rocketed already insane streaming royalties through the roof, threatening the entire noncommercial and small webcaster industry segments.
Broadcast radio already sucks worse than ever. Streaming was the only hope for people to escape the corporate noose in realtime and archived media delivery. Right as streaming was starting to get a hold in video, presenting an on-demand P2P (or communities small to large) world of all media, both kinds of royalties got jacked up to destroy the free publishers. Right as cameraphones also have the bandwidth (and caches) to play streaming radio, and even upload "news from the street", the media mainstream corporate got yet another life extension from the government, killing
--
make install -not war
My guess would be that the RIAA is actually trying to *control* what radio stations play, since that annoying "law enforcement" stuff is getting in the way of payola.
A major record label can create a list of songs they want played, and offer special royalty-free licenses to broadcast them as a promotion. Independent artists, bands that the RIAA's members just doesn't feel like promoting for whatever commercial reason, etc., won't have the beureucratic infrastructure to *offer* such an arrangement, even if they wished to do so.
And, of course, if they don't like particular *stations*, for whatever reason, they can refuse to cut deals with them.
It's the same story as with internet radio - it's all about control.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Oh this has nothing to do with music sales and traditional broadcast radio. This is still about internet "radio".
Internet "radio" is going back to congress asking to be treated like a real radio station and get back to a zero royalty rate. The RIAA wants to head this off and say that real radio needs to pay too. It won't work, but they are going to give it a go...
Actually, grocery stores do pay (or I should say are required to pay). As are most businesses. They usually contract a service to pipe in music and the fees are built into the subscription fees.
I don't know where the law comes down on small mom and pop outfits that have the radio on in the background, but anyplace that has piped in music is paying.
A final note: if the stores are part of a chain, there is a good chance that all the stores get the same music, since the chain can use that in-house channel to play not just light-jazzed-pop-songs, but in-store specials and other internal marketing pieces.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Does this remind anyone of how copyright law gets legislated?
"Hey, you Internet radio people! The normal radio people are paying $$. You should pay $$$$ because it's New and Different and it can be copied all over the place. And now we're getting a law passed for it."
"Okay, okay, here you go."
"Hey, normal radio people! Internet radio people are paying $$$$. You guys should be paying $$$$$$, I mean we can't even measure how many people you reach! And now we're getting a law passed for it."
"Okay, okay, here you go."
"Hey, Internet radio people! Normal radio people pay $$$$$$, why are you only paying $$$$?"
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27696
I bet you someone reported the onion as fact again... everyone just calm down.
Have you looked at the date on that link? 1940. Good job with the karma-whoring, buddy. You might also want plagarizing an article that actually uses dated language.
;^)
For the record, BMI was not founded last fall. It's been around since 1939, which is an eternity in radio. ASCAP currently claims to have 275,000 members! In fact, being a member of ASCAP or BMI is virtually a requirement if you are a professional musician, as is being a member of a professional union.
But I'd like to also point out, having worked in radio, that ASCAP and BMI fees can be huge for small stations. The radio station I belonged to was owned by a university, and as a result, the university was able to negotiate a blanket contract for all peformances, radio stations, and jukeboxes operated on the campus (excluding the big performance venue, which was actually subcontracted to an outside vendor). We could have paid this fee ourselves, but it would have been a huge chunk of our operating costs.
This is greed, plain and simple. The reason why the RIAA wants a cut is because ASCAP and BMI (and SESAC, if you count Europe) fees do not go back to the labels, unless the label owns the copyright on the score (contrasted with owning the copyright on the recording). ASCAP and BMI fees are generally regarded as a good thing, because this is money that artists actually see. When a radio station plays a Nirvana cover of a Meat Puppets tune, the Meat Puppets get the dough. This is a good thing for small artists.
But there is a downside: ASCAP and BMI reporting is, at best, wildly inaccurate. "Charting" happens infrequently, and relies on stations actually taking the time to report this information correctly. Often it is not. I've heard rumors that SoundScan also has a service that scans the airwaves using a detection heuristic, but I can't find any information about that service, so maybe it was just speculation on the part of one of my coworkers.
Anyway, labels send radio stations boxes and boxes of free music. We're supposed to pay them now for playing their crap? I thought that's what all the coke and blowjobs were for
- 10. Marching bands
- 9. Wedding singers
- 8. Kindergarten classes (they see a veritable MINT in The Hokey Pokey alone!)
- 7. "Hold-Music"
- 6. "Elevator-Music"
- 5. Doorbells (esp. the kind like at the Clampett mansion on The Beverly Hillbillies)
- 4. Ambulance sirens (their lawyers are nostalgic about chasing them anyway...)
- 3. Organ grinders
- 2. Merry-go-rounds
And the #1 next target for their evil attentions:This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
The RIAA already pays the radio stations to tell people what to like. They have all but admitted to manipulating playlists via bribes because they acknowledge that radio play == sales. So I'm not entirely sure how they are now going to argue that radio play is suddenly detrimental. Particularly not when they're still actively engaged in it. (though now via a corporate shell-game to side-step the FCC)
My guess, is that the RIAAs is trying to put an end to payola. If the stations legally 'owe' the RIAA money for broadcasting, then they can negotiate airplay without having to write checks. They'll just grant the broadcasters performance rights 'coupons' for certain artists/tracks. Nothing really changes, the labels cut down some of the cost-of-doing business.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
They already pay fees to play this music. Ever heard of ASCAP and BMI? That's why indie radio stations can't play commercial artists. Radio stations already pay to play, and now the RIAA wants royalties on top of licensing fees?
What's the difference, someone point it out to me, please!
My Babylon
No, no it wouldn't. Don't fool yourself. People who listen to radio, for the most part listen to music the RIAA controls because they like the music. That's why people pirate the music the RIAA controls. Clear Channel exists because there are lots of people that like its product. Sad? Perhaps, but no less true.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Commercial music was once one of the great joys of my life. I loved mainstream rock'n'roll, high-profile jazz artists, famous classical artists; in fact, I loved just about everything except country. I spent a lot of money on vinyl, then tape, then CDs, often re-buying the same music when a new format came along. You wouldn't believe how much I've spent over the years.
I loved Napster and Kazaa when they came along because they allowed me to sample a lot of music I wouldn't have heard otherwise. When I found something I liked, I'd go out and buy a CD. You know, to 'support the band'. Only it turns out the bands didn't get much (if any) of the money, anyway; it went to the record companies and stopped there. Didn't matter, because the RIAA shut the download sites down. No more music sampling for me.
Then the RIAA went on a rampage and started dragging grannies and gradeschoolers into court. That's when I stopped buying music. I just quit completely. I haven't bought a new CD in over four years.
I began listening to Internet-streamed radio and loved it. Then the RIAA began trying to shut that down. Now they're going after commercial radio.
Well, screw them. I'm done. No more commercial, big-record-company music for me. The RIAA can kiss my shiny metal ass.
In the process of listening to streaming music, I've discovered some great independent music. I don't need the craptactular garbage the record companies dish out anymore. Especially not if they're going to try to fine me or send me to jail if I don't listen to it on their terms.
Screw them. I hope they all starve, and their children, too.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
"Mary Wilson, who with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard formed the original Supremes, said the exemption was unfair and forced older musicians to continue touring to pay their bills."
Oh no! You mean those poor musicians have to keep working, just like the rest of us!? What is this world coming to!?
Does an older assembly line worker at Ford continue to get paid every time someone drives a classic Mustang? Does an Amish quilt maker get a nickel every time someone gets cold and covers up? Of course not! Then what makes musicians so special?
Idiots. Get back to work!