Taxes suck because government destroys about 50% of any wealth they get their hands on. Taxing music airplay will not be any different and shows a lack of understanding of how commercial radio works.
True, in the case of music radio; in the case of talk radio, let’s face it, it’s there to sell ads too. Conservative talk gets higher ratings and attracts more advertising/ gets more money than progressive talk. If a station reaches the proper demos, it can prosper.
There are ads running on some music stations and even some
talk stations (like Boston’s WTKK) urging a defeat of the performance tax, saying it would cost station owners more money and they wouldn’t be able to do quality programming
(WTKK’s owners also own stations in town that have country,
classic rock-pop, and adult contemporary, and all do fairly well in the ratings). So, say, country WKLB wouldn’t like paying huge royalties to RCA-Nashville. Right now they provide a service to these labels: play their music and the labels get promotion for the artists. They get the music,
the labels get free advertising.
I have been a volunteer DJ for years at a college radio
station, playing blues music; most of our material for my
show comes from smaller labels with names like Alligator,
Delmark, Blind Pig, Delta Groove, etc. and a few majors
(such as MCA who re-issues music on the famed Chess
label). We get em for free, play em, and help to promote
the music both on our terrestrial signal and online. How would a small college station deal with having to pay a label, on top of already paying fees to BMI/ASCAP, etc.?
A few days ago several stations in Wisconsin stopped playing music for an hour to show what might happen if the so-called performance tax came about. Instead they had a one hour panel discussion on the issue.
The website that opposes the perf tax, as they call it,
says many stations might have to switch to talk radio
if this happens. But how many talk stations could a market
support? Sooner of later, the stations would have to go out of business.
It is not really a tax. The government gets none of it. It is a licensing fee paid by radio stations to the copyright owner of the material, the record company and the recording artist, for the use of the material to sell airtime. If the songwriter/publisher gets paid, why not the performer/record company? It is a business expense for the broadcaster and I want my share just like the songwriter. Again, if you are going to pay the copyright owner of the song you should pay the copyright owner of the recorded performance of the song.