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Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties
Major Blud writes: Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the "Fair Play Fair Pay Act" today that would end regulations that allow terrestrial radio stations to avoid paying royalties to artists and labels. Currently, AM/FM radio stations aren't required to pay royalties to publishers and songwriters. The proposed measure requires stations that earn less than $1 million a year in revenue to pay $500 annually. For nonprofit public, college and other non-commercial broadcasters, the fee would be $100 per year. Religious and talk stations would be exempt from any payments. Larger radio companies like iHeartMedia (858 stations in the U.S.) would have to pay more.
"The current system is antiquated and broken. It pits technologies against each other, and allows certain services to get away with paying little or nothing to artists. For decades, AM/FM radio has used whatever music it wants without paying a cent to the musicians, vocalists, and labels that created it. Satellite radio has paid below market royalties for the music it uses, growing into a multibillion dollar business on the back of an illogical 'grandfathered' royalty standard that is now almost two decades old," said Congressman Nadler.
"The current system is antiquated and broken. It pits technologies against each other, and allows certain services to get away with paying little or nothing to artists. For decades, AM/FM radio has used whatever music it wants without paying a cent to the musicians, vocalists, and labels that created it. Satellite radio has paid below market royalties for the music it uses, growing into a multibillion dollar business on the back of an illogical 'grandfathered' royalty standard that is now almost two decades old," said Congressman Nadler.
So what you're saying is my college radio didn't need to pay ASCAP and BMI?
Dewey: Oh, you wanna learn something?
Summer: Yes, I do.
Dewey: You want me to teach you something? [most of the students nod] Here's a useful lesson for you: give up. Just quit. Because in this life, you can't win. Sure, you can try. [really getting angry] But in the end you're just gonna lose, BIG TIME. Because THE WORLD is run by the Man.
Frankie: Who?
Dewey: The Man. Oh, you don't know the Man? [class shakes their heads] He's everywhere. In the White House, down the hall, MISS MULLINS, she's the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, and he's burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! Okay? And there used to be a way to stick it to The Man. It was called rock ‘n’ roll. But guess what. Oh, no. The Man ruined that too with a little thing called MTV! So don’t waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome, because The Man’s just going to call you a fat, washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!!!
Now I can finally sleep at night, knowing that those poor, starving artists are being properly compensated...
For decades, AM/FM radio has used whatever music it wants without paying a cent to the musicians, vocalists, and labels that created it.
That's because radio is free advertising for the artists. Now they want the free advertising and to get paid for it, too? In decades past, the labels would bribe radio station PD's to get their music played; I wonder if they'd rather return to that model where it costs them money (and coke, and cars, and plane tickets) to get their artists some airtime?
Speaking of payola, it should come as no surprise that "TV/Movies/Music" are among the top 3 industries donating money to both Mr. Nadler and Ms. Blackburn.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
There's NOTHING in the bill that would pay artists,
only record companies.
As to the comments on ASCAP and BMI. In most cases "license fees" are another term for royalties. And in this case they are.
This is more backdoor BS by the record company shills.
'grandfathered' royalty standard that is now almost two decades old," said Congressman Nadler.
Is it just me, or is that pretty young for regulations? Do we really need to re-write the laws every five years? I'm pretty liberal, but I don't see how businesses can make any long term plans if regulations are going to shift that rapidly.
I'm so confused now. There are artists, song writers, labels and publishers. Then there is physical media, purchased digital, free streaming, paid streaming, AM/FM and satellite. Who is getting paid and who is paying?
What principled justification would there be for excluding 'religious' and 'talk' stations from payment? One would think that any 'religious' station would either be a nonprofit or deserve to pay like any other business; and 'talk' is huge business, and presumably not a terribly heavy consumer of music.
I can take a few guesses about the pragmatic political considerations for those exemptions; but they aren't exactly complementary.
...stations be free of this forced payola as well? If not, is there are list somewhere of which dieties must be worshipped to escape this tax?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The summary said it would be $500 if you make less than $1M in revenue. Doesn't seem like a ton of money.
If the huge corporate stations without jockeys fold I'm not so sure I care.
They tried that in the late 60's in Australia. So the Aust. radio stations refused to play any US pop/rock and concentrated on available UK bands That very thing allowed the local industry to air home grown tracks on radio (and TV) and I for one think it was the beginning of the early commercial Oz music. Eventually the USA licensors gave up but the re-uptake of US bands by radio stations was slow.
The other thing is that quite a few radio stations are owned by religious organizations, even though they are full commercial for the added revenue.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Radio stations don't make a lot of money and publishers have been happy for many years with the status quo. I think this is really about hammering internet radio services. Internet radio services point at AM/FM services and say "look at them, they don't pay either"... and as a result, that depresses the bargaining position of publishers with internet radio.
They want more money from internet radio. And that's also silly because that is also a marginal business. They're basically not making money as it is. If they are forced to pay more they have to charge more and asking listeners to pony up more money every month is going to depress subscriptions and possibly drive the entire service into bankruptcy. Leaving the industry with nothing but itunes and piracy.
The music industry is run by idiots. We've known this for years. They were approuched by the founders of napster long before they actually started pushing pirated music. They said "hey, lets set up a music service run by the music industry.". We all know what happened. The music bozos threw them out and said don't come back.
How has that worked out for the music business? They keep thinking they can turn the clock back. They can't. They need to get ahead of the curve or get crushed.
Their cash reserves and social capital/clout are a diminishing resource. The window of opportunity to have any agency in this issue is closing. They can either wake up or become irrelevant.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Well - in other parts of the world royalties are already paid for played music, and music is still played on the radios so it won't kill radio.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Legislation killed the radio star...
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
Don't give Marsha Blackburn any new ideas. She has none of her own and is just about the most vapid puff of pastry ever elected to the House.
The article quotes "all artists are fairly compensated".
Why would the publishers and music companies ever support something like that? Their business is based on making sure artists collect as little as possible of their royalties, assisted by collecting organisations siphoning off their share.
Something smells fishy, unless this is actually a strike against middlemen like the BMI? Probably with the end goal of handing collection over to the music biz further guaranteeing artists don't in fact get "fairly compensated".
And extend it from terrestrial broadcasts to satellite and internet radio? Never did understand why the recording industry gets to charge some people to advertise their product.
you might not win but when enough of us do it, 'The Man', also loses.
And this is why civilizations fall, instead of fixing themselves. Because revolution only works when enough of us are on the same page at once. Nobody wants to be first. By the time enough people are upset to fix things, the society falls into revolt and then you usually get an even worse government, which is just as corrupt as the old government but also ignorant of how to operate a nation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
All they have to do is pick one of the big 5 labels, one of the smaller two. And say....
Oops....NONE OF YOUR ARTISTS are getting any airplay.
That label will tank, as none of their artists will get sales. Meanwhile, those artists will riot, because they will be locked into contracts unable to move to another company, and unable to make profits. The result - RIAA will backpedal.
If the terrestrial radio stations aren't paying anything... and there's now one US Satellite music company basically... how in the hell can you say the one satellite music company that IS paying you at least something is paying "below market royalties". I mean, what are they calling the "market" royalties as the only other thing really left is internet streaming, which they made sure years ago to put in place a crazy high rate.
Was that the plan all along? Get internet radio stations to have to pay some crazy royalty fee and then later bitch that the other options, like satellite, are paying a "below market royalty" compared to internet streaming? I mean, it's not really below market, it's just lower than your extremely high forced/made up market price...
This situation is clearly something that few understand. We have two different aspects of copyright here On one hand we have ASCAP and BMI as well as Harry Fox Agency who have responsibilities to handle the income from radio play on behalf of their member songwriters and their publishers.
However due to an exemption granted by US Congress around 1937 terrestrial radio was granted a limited reprieve from paying the owners of the sound recordings (not publishers, who get paid) any royalties in order to build their broadcasting networks. You would think that by now they have built them after almost 80 years?
To add insult to injury, because this ruling prevents foreign copyright owners from collecting any performance royalties from their material being broadcast by US radio, these countries around the world reciprocate and deny US owners of sound recordings any income from music they own that gets played on radio stations around the globe, which unlike the US typically do pay sound recording owners for the use of this material.
Clearly, most if not all radio stations around the rest of the world do pay sound recording owners for use of songs in their catalogs, and still manage to thrive.
But the lobbying power of the NAB (National broadcasters' association) and the dizzying amounts of money they've spent spreading FUD on making US radio like the rest of the world would be the death of them -> the famous campaign "The Day They Killed The Music" which should really be renamed "The Day They Killed Fat Corporate Profits To Radio Mega-Conglomerates".
Because even though terrestrial stations across the entire planet have managed to thrive and survive while paying such fees to sound recording owners for all of these years, somehow in the US enacting this legislation would make them die off. Well, one thing for sure: they'd make less profits because they would have to share some of the income with the very people who created the sound recordings; yes, those that they have gotten in the habit of using for free.
It used to be that "one hand washes the other" because radio play ensured such massive sales that those who got their music played reaped a huge windfall in record sales. So it was tolerated, and no one in their right frame of mind would have dared challenge this. But now that record sales are down to a trickle of their former glory, it's looking as if the exemption has run its course and it doesn't make sense anymore to let radio stations benefit from this anachronistic advantage that hurts sound recording owners doubly by also denying them income from play of their masters overseas.
Again: sound recordings, not the musical compositions themselves nor the publishers who represent the interest of those who wrote them.
Lastly, a few years ago terrestrial radio was obviously quite keen on forcing Internet radio startups (unwanted competition) to pay these royalties to sound recording owners they themselves are exempt from. Surely they could anticipate that by doing this, someone was going to eventually challenge their hegemony, and call for fairness across the whole spectrum of broadcasters. Classic case of pot calling the kettle back.
They've gotten away with it for so long, and built empires from this exemption. It's time for this anachronistic advantage to be erased. One thing we can be sure: they'd rather spend billions making sure it never turns into law rather than spending the same paying it to the owners of the sound recordings whose catalogs they built their business model around, by using them for free for so many decades.
Make a clear statement that pre-1972 recordings have value and those who are profiting from them must pay appropriate royalties for their use
So, royalties for songs that are 43 years old and older... I can hear the founding fathers crying from their graves.
-TheDawgLives suckitdown