Posted on 10/12/2009 5:53:52 PM PDT by clyde_m
What exactly is going on? Jennifer Bendall, executive director of musicFIRST, sums it up rather quickly: "It's unfair, unjustified and un-American that artists and musicians are paid absolutely nothing when their recordings are played on AM and FM radio. Music is their work, their livelihood. They deserve fair pay for air play." Pandora Radio is pushing for passage - they pay royalties yet radio stations do not for the same product.
(Excerpt) Read more at patriotroom.com ...
The difference between Radio and an Electronic Medium like the Internet is that it is difficult to obtain perfect digital copies of music from the radio. Not saying it can’t be done, it’s just way more difficult to do than it would be if the sound is already coming out of your computer speakers.
Record companies realize this and view Radio as having much greater return on their small investment, whereas an electronic medium like the internet probably leaves them at a net loss once the material is ‘captured’ or ‘ripped’ into a perfect digital copy which can be cloned millions of times over a file-sharing network.
Radio sells albums, The Internet steals albums.
This would, of course, be the end of music radio.
If they want to restrict even more the exposure of artists let this pass.
If they think commerical radio playlists are limited now, this will make it worse. The Public and non-comm channels will follow suit. All pledge drives all the time or go all public domain classical.
I don’t know what the future holds. I think we end up with a system where music is cheap to free and more emphasis is placed on public performance. I don’t discount that albums take work to make and distribute, it’s just that it seems this business model can’t sustain itself and artists would have to tour more and sell more merchandise if they want to have a career.
Other than the mp3 revolution of which Itunes is the biggest proven success, there has been another revolution afoot, as well. That is that Professional Studio Recordings can be made by any music/tech geek with the right setup using PC’s at home. Not only is the distribution model changing, the production model is changing at the same time. The middleman will probably be completely eliminated within a decade or so.
Many artists have gone the self distribution route. You’re right, the day of the Garage Band has come and gone and come back again. They have replaced a Wollensak Reel To Reel with a soundcard and Cool Edit.
With Facebook or MySpace page you have your own distribution network.
God forbid you actually expose the artist to people who never would have known who the hell you were previously.
Musicians are not business people, obviously.
You want fair pay? You have to negotiate it. Some big stars obtain a percentage of the publishing rights by adding their names as co-writers.
I just bought an editing suite from IK Multimedia that allows me to master at home with replicas of legendary devices like the Fairchild 670 compressor. I bought 5 plugins for $99.
It’s insane what I can do now compared to bouncing tracks on a two-inch eight track like I had to do in college.
We used to audit our playlist quarterly for BMI and ASCAP for which the station paid a fee from that the music owners were paid royalties. Must admit that was 30+ years ago. Has that changed?
I just got my first Sirius bill since July when they decided to recoup the royalties they have to pay. So now it looks like they charge $25 a year per radio in “royalty” fees.
With the Democrats in charge I fully expect new royalty fees to be imposed on AM-FM radio stations.
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