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Black Radio and the "Performance Rights" Toll Booth
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
Also published at Black Agenda Report
Will Saving Black Radio Save Local News And Public Service?
A few weeks ago Radio One founder Cathy Hughes, echoed by Tom Joyner and dozens of other radio personalities, sounded the alarm. HR 848 they cried, a bill to make stations pay a “performance rights” fee for every song played, was a mortal threat to black radio. In a widely circulated blog post which was echo-blasted to everybody on any Radio One email list, Hughes cited black radio’s stellar contributions of news, diversity and local content as reasons why African American communities should rally to protect it. She even claimed black talk and gospel were “money losing formats” as if these were public services and tithes offered out of Radio One’s bottomless reservoir of corporate good will.
The laughter was pretty hard to suppress. Commentators like Paul Scott and Mark Anthony Neal ran columns titled “Should We Save Black Radio?” and “Should Black Radio Die?” to which they answered “probably not” and “maybe.” The widely known fact, as BAR’s Glen Ford pointed out six years ago in “Who Killed Black Radio News” is that Radio One led the industry in purging news, public service and local content of all kinds from its airwaves in favor of cheap, syndicated, uninformed talk, mostly about celebrities and relationships. Radio One’s payola-influenced playlists are indistinguishable from its white-owned black radio competitors. Perhaps to protect their audiences from too many confusing facts, Tom Joyner, Cathy Hughes and the rest of the "save black radio" posse never mention that white broadcasters, the National Association of Broadcasters in fact, are just as opposed to HR 848 as they are, for most of the same reasons. So the truth is surely more complicated than Cathy Hughes and her posse would have us believe.
HR 848, the so-called Performance Rights Act, which Hughes says may be the death knell of black radio is sponsored by Detroit congressman John Conyers. It has dozens of high-profile celebrity boosters. The legislation will supposedly compensate performing artists – authors, composers and copyright holders are already taken care of by other intellectual property laws – when their work is played on the radio. Putting aside for the moment the economics of radio stations, it doesn’t sound like an inherently bad idea. Artistry is work, and work ought to be paid, right?
Will Revenue From the Performance Rights Act Actually Reach Performers?
The answers here are: not much and not likely. Given the historic business practices of the industry, and the provisions of HR 848, it’s safe to say artists won’t see much of this money. It will be extracted from radio stations,and collected and disbursed by Sound Exchange or other representatives of the same suits who have made an industry out of stealing from artists since the dawn of time, or at least since recording business managed to make the recorded product it distributed and controlled, instead of the artists’ live performances which it did not control, the music industry’s main revenue stream. HR 848 also guarantees industry execs the right to rake an unspecified portion off the top for handling charges.
Section 6(1)(1)(a) of the law says that entitlement of the artist to these payments is “…in accordance with the terms of the artist’s contract,” rather than in addition to or outside of and not subject to the contract. In plain English that means a cleverly written or dishonestly administered contract can easily divert these new “performance royalties” to pockets other than those of the performers.
As Mark Anthony Neal put it:
“Record companies are simply disingenuous when they suggest that artists will benefit from the passing of HR 848, when their own business practices guarantee the average artist less than 10-percent of profits generated from the sale of their recordings and the companies will themselves take part of the proceeds generated from the collection of a “performance tax.” If the RIAA and Record companies were really so concerned with the plight of artist, they would create less exploitive relationships with artists. ”
The representatives of RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, clearly wrote this law for their own benefit, not that of artists. It’s no secret that CD sales, and recording industry profits have been on the downtourn for years. The RIAA blames this on digital technologies and downloading, and it has used its lobbying muscle in Congress to pass one law after another against what it calls digital "piracy.". According to Lawrence Lessig, RIAA has aided the Department of Justice in prosecuting 25,000 people over the last few years for downloading songs over the internet without paying license fees. As far as anybody knows not a penny recovered has gone to artists. Two years ago RIAA imposed a similar fee structure on internet radio, making it prohibitively expensive for many of those stations to incorporate any sort of music in their programming. The defenders of internet radio saw the handwriting on the wall; they predicted that broadcast radio would be next. Tom Joyner, Cathy Hughes and the rest did nothing, and now the wolf is at their door.
How HR 848 Will Work in the Real World: More Payola and the Same Old Songs
In the real world, there are two economies. There’s a real economy where goods and services are produced, and where wealth is created by labor of one kind or another. There is also a fake economy, a parasite on the real one comprised mostly of the FIRE sector, (finance, insurance and real estate) along with the intellectual property racket. This fake economy lives on rents, interest payments, user fees and government subsidies. Its agents are always on the lookout for places in the real economy where they can plant toll booths to extract revenue without the bother of providing any service or adding any value.
The so-called Performance Rights bill is a toll booth the recording industry wants to place in the middle of radio broadcasting. It creates a new class of “intellectual property” supposedly for the benefit of performing artists, but subject to the artist’s contract, administered, and easily tapped by the record labels and their reps. The possibilities for abuse by labels and the recording industry are mind boggling, and include the outright legalization of longstanding industry practices of payola and reverse payola. While standard fees will be set, rates are open to bargaining between broadcasters and labels who supposedly represent artists. Labels will be able to offer one station or chain of them a lower rate on the songs of preferred artists if they take less preferred ones as part of the package. Labels already pay for remotes, contest premiums, and the personal appearances of station personalities with their artists. The "performance rights" revenue stream will be just one more channel they can adjust upward or downward in their bargaining with broadcasters.
They can offer a station or chain a lower rate for reducing the airplay of a competitor’s music or scrubbing it from the playlists altogether. Labels can demand a higher compensation rate than that offered to other artists, and where they have the bargaining power, some stations can demand lower rates than other stations. The largest chains, like Clear Channel, will be in a better bargaining position than smaller ones like Radio One. Just as Cathy Hughes and the “save black radio” crowd are saying, smaller chains, smaller stations, and the relative few minority station owners will be disproportionately endangered. Black radio as we know it truly is in mortal danger.
Will HR 848 Put More Money in the Pockets of Up and Coming Artists?
No way. Beyond the fact that the suits will intercept most of the funds before artists ever see them, you have to get radio airplay to get paid. Most artists can’t get played on the radio now, and HR 848 doesn’t change that. Labels will have little incentive to press lesser known and new artists onto the stations, since they’ll make more money on the higher fees established artists will command.
If Cathy Hughes and black broadcasters wanted to call the bluff of RIAA and the pro "performance rights" people on showcasing new artists, they could garner unprecedented public support and look like real heroes in this. All it would take, one industry insider told BAR, would be for them to throw away their payola-influenced playlists for a couple days each week and play nothing but new, unknown, up-and-coming artists. "That’s what they’d do if they really wanted to be the good guys in this, if they had the imagination and the nerve," we were told. But don’t look for that to happen.
Where Will the Recording Industry Plant its Next Revenue- Extracting Toll Booth?
Two years ago it was internet radio. This season broadcast radio is in the crosshairs. Once the “performance rights” toll booth is planted in broadcast radio, it won’t be long before the RIAA demands payments from nightclub disk jockeys, who unlike radio broadcasters, do not have their own paid lobbyists, or from the guy down the street you hired to spin records at a birthday party last week. Think about it. What if innovators like DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambatta were forced to pay a "performance rights" fee?
Ultimately, this is where the creation and expansion of new and old "intellectual property" rights leads us: to the place where artistic innovation and simple truth telling are squashed by the need to maximize the profit of somebody who doesn’t do the creating, the labor and the performing in the first place.
Runaway “intellectual property” rights are the problem, not the solution
Eyes On The Prize, the award winning 14-hour documentary first aired on PBS in 1987 and 1990 is a great example of how intellectual property rights are used to strangle free expression in the public interest. When the work was produced in the 1990s, its authors could only raise the money to get time-limited rights to the archival news footage and music used in this thirty-year chronicle of the Freedom Movement and its aftermath. When the rights to the music and news footage ran out in the 1990s, the program could no longer be broadcast anywhere in the U.S. Copies were pulled from shelves no DVDs of it were produced. By 2005 the asking price for copies of Eyes On The Prize was $1,500 on ebay, and the only publicly viewable copies were on the shelves of public libraries. This invaluable history was lost to a new generation. Why?
Because major news organizations like CBS and NBC claimed they had to get a cut every time it was broadcast since pieces of their news footage was in it. The authors and composers of songs played in the documentary insisted their “rights” were violated if the show was broadcast and they were not reimbursed. There’s a scene in which Dr. martin Luther King’s aides surprise him with a birthday cake and sing a verse of “Happy Birthday.” The multinational firm which owned the rights to the song demanded $20,000 to keep the scene intact. It’s all a perfectly legal part of the intellectual property racket.
Another example of the absurdly parasitic nature of the intellectual property regime, is the classic 1942 movie Casablanca. Since it was made almost seventy years ago, every human being involved in writing, producing, performing, and editing it, those who catered the food, mixed the sound, worked the cameras, sets, costumes and makeup and the rest have all passed away, most of them decades ago. We don’t have to worry about the movie’s revenues encouraging these people to keep up their creative work because they are long dead.
Still, Casablanca remains the private intellectual property of its vampire owners, who had nothing to do with creating it. You cannot broadcast, perform, duplicate or sell a DVD of it without paying them. This is precisely what the Performance Rights Bill will do for radio; it will set up another deathless toll booth to extract payments, mostly for works decades old, on behalf of investors who had nothing to do with creating or performing it, but supposedly in the name of the performing artists themselves.
Two wrongs are just twice as wrong: oppose HR 848
HR 848 is bad news, no doubt about it, and should be defeated. Cathy Hughes and her posse dare not tell us exactly why, because the more we understand about the recording and radio industries the guiltier she and her colleagues look for helping construct and profit from this system which has now turned upon them. Black commercial radio is very much corporate radio and every bit as much the enemy as the corrupt recording industry. Commercial black radio does not deliver news or public service or local content. It doesn’t showcase new talent. Black radio as we know it has never defended nonprofit community radio stations, or low power FM radio. Like the black business class itself, black radio has become incapable of defending itself by painting an accurate picture and simply telling the truth – black radio refused to step up when the performance rights toll booth was imposed on internet radio, by which time any fool could see they were the next target.
Where Do We Go From Here?
We have to look beyond old John Conyers, his celebrity spokespeople and the lobbyists who pull their strings. We have to ignore the hypocritical squeals of Cathy Hughes and corporate black radio. The broadcast radio and intellectual property regimes are both in need of deep and thorough reform.
Corporate actors need to be held responsible directly by the people. Black audiences need to demand that the corporations who aim their broadcasts at black communities:
Support HR 1147, the Community Low Power Radio Act
This law enables nonprofit community broadcasters to operate low power radio stations with three to six mile footprints in thousands of urban, suburban and rural communities. Low power nonprofit broadcasters will provide news and public service and access to audiences for local artists.
Support community radio and nonprofit broadcasting
Hundreds of community radio stations already exist to provide cultural and news programming that corporate outlets refuse to. They too will be adversely affected by the performance rights toll booth.
Remove the “performance rights” toll booth from internet radio, and prevent its extension to deejays and others
The proliferation of “intellectual property” toll booth is virtually strangling the new medium of communication in its cradle, and the reach of the intellectual property rackets threaten film, video, the internet and the emergence of new art, artists and means of expression. Ways must be found to compensate artists, not investors.
Allow CDs and DVD mixtapes and videos to be sent through the mail at no cost
For most of the 19th century, newspaper postage was free. When Frederick Douglass and others started anti-slavery newspapers they paid no postage, and newspapers were most of the post office’s traffic. Technological advances have placed audio and video production within the reach of many, but corporate lobbyists have rigged the postal code to prevent the sharing of CDs and DVDs with mass audiences.
Demand that the FCC conduct real inquiries into payola
This is the dead dog in the room that neither the “save black radio” crowd nor the recording industry will talk about. But it’s real, and it’s the main barrier to new and diverse artists being heard on the airwaves.
Shorten the broadcast license term to three years
Under Ronald Reagan broadcast licenses were extended to eight years, making broadcasters much less responsible to the public and thwarting the public accountability at renewal times. Acting FCC Commissioner Michael Kopps has already suggested this reform, though he says it will be up to his successor appointed by the Obama administration to carry it out. That means it’s up to us to demand it.
Demand that black radio employ journalists and a newsgathering operation or lose the good will of black communities.
This is a demand communities can make directly upon the corporate license holders. A generation ago black radio did exactly that, and provided news and public service to its audience, something we will not see again without a demand.
Use the transition to digital radio as the occasion to redistribute broadcast licenses.
Like the transition to digital TV, the switch to digital radio broadcasting means that many more frequencies will be available. But instead of the time for voices to be heard, a corrupt deal gave all the new digital TV channels to existing holders of broadcast TV licenses. That must not happen with digital radio.
BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon can be contacted at Bruce.Dixon(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
25 Comments
Good article Bruce. My view on this is that this is just another cycle by the major labels to squeeze local broadcasters and concentrate the airplay into a handful of artists. If this happens the Alternative music and performers in genres that are less covered, as well as small scale performers need to create an alternative licensing system. That happened back when BMI and ASCAP went head to head. So maybe its time to do so again. Most of these performers get pennies in Royalties. The don’t benefit at all. Non-commercial radio could simply say…we’re no longer playing material from the major labels.
What would be needed would be a clearing house where artists could opt out of the ASCAP/BMI system, and a small fee paid to administer that system.
There also has to be a general reform of the copyright laws. There is no reason why songs a generation and more old are not public domain. There is other material I gathered but could not use in the article, like a young man mentioned in one of Larry Lessig’s presentations who produced a film for under $300 a couple years ago that was highly accalimned at the Cannes Film Festival.
But the rights to the music would have cost him $400,000, so you will never see that movie.
Good to see you here Bruce (first became aware of you via DemocracyNow);
“Runaway “intellectual property” rights are the problem, not the solution” ; BINGO !! And it’s not just ‘performance art’ that this is a problem for, it’s what the industrialized nations use to hold down the ‘developing world’ via ‘free trade agreements’.
This part of the legislation “2) such decisions are made based on the needs of the local community.” is problematical. I live in a major city in SoCal and when I looked into this I found that because the FM band already had many ‘minority’ stations, such wouldn’t be allowed.
It will take work and organization into some sort of ‘group’ to persuade the FCC that LPFM has a ‘home’ in densely populated (urban) areas.
I urge everyone to read the full text of the bill to see how the NAB -you know, the only ones who really benefit from the exhorbitant costs associated with campaigning- has fought such ‘freedom of speech’(because that IS what it is about).
Bruce, you make a number of good points, and I can agree with a lot of what you say. However, I have to take exception to a lot of it, especially regarding the Performance Right for recording artists. Let’s keep this separate from the webcasting issue, as people tend to lump these together. But the Performance Right that’s moving through Congress right now only pertains to terrestrial radio, in other words AM and FM.
Big broadcasters, represented by NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters, would like to be able to use the musicians’ creative output to gather the audience that they sell to their advertisers, but they would rather not pay the creators anything for it. Whenever it’s suggested that they should pay, they tend to spin doomsday scenarios, now apparently even to the point of suggesting the death knell for Black radio. It’s all hogwash. They can afford it. They are just indulging in the popular American pastime of trying to hold on to as much as they can.
Please don’t misrepresent the Performance Right as something that only benefits the record companies–or to use your favored pejorative, the “suits.” Sure, the RIAA is one of its backers, and you can say anything bad you want about them; you’ve got a long way to go before you can exceed the bad things I’ve said about them. And if the bill passes, half the money goes to the record labels. But forty percent is paid directly to the featured artist, with the remaining ten percent reserved for the sidemen and backup singers. These are all paid directly to these artists, not to the labels.
Other backers of this bill are organizations with a track record of protecting musicians, including the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, the musicians’ union, and the Recording Academy. One reason may be that they realize something you may not: more and more the artist is his own record company. The day of the major labels is just about over. I work with musicians every day, getting their recordings mastered for release, and the vast majority are now funding their own recordings and owning their own masters. They may not get the saturation airplay that the majors are still buying, but when they do get played they will get the whole royalty payment. They and the sidemen, that is.
Also, on the subject of your film anecdote:
“like a young man mentioned in one of Larry Lessig’s presentations who produced a film for under $300 a couple years ago that was highly accalimned at the Cannes Film Festival. But the rights to the music would have cost him $400,000, so you will never see that movie.”
This just doesn’t stand up to even a cursory glance. If you really believe that anyone demanded $400K for music rights to a film, I gotta challenge you to provide backup, I think that’s BS. But whatever the amount that was asked, you can’t stand behind the assertion that it prevents the release of the film. What about the other option: don’t use the music. Or use somebody else’s music, someone who wants to let you have it at a price you can afford. Or just write and record you own hit songs! It’s easy, right? Anyone can do it, right? That’s why we shouldn’t value it. Look, if the music is that important to the film, the filmmaker should pay the musician, his creativity is what’s giving the film value.
And if the broadcasters use music to attract their audience, then the musician IS the attraction, and should be paid accordingly. To suggest otherwise is to be a corporate shill for the NAB.
Which group is worse for America? the record labels or the corporate radio broadcasters who have been working (successfully) for the last 80 years to keep performers from getting paid when their work is used to sell advertising?
The argument you’re making is straight out of the the NAB playbook
The NAB will do anything they can to keep from giving a dime to artists OR record labels. The record labels and RIAA are wrong for suing people for file sharing and giving out crappy contracts for decades. But radio has been profiting from artists even worse than labels for far longer.
HR828 DOES pay artists directly. DIRECTLY. Half the money doesn’t go to the labels but directly to artists. Do you even know any artists that are registered with soundexchange? I do. The ones that I know, actually enjoy receiving the dollars they earn from satellite and internet radio royalties they EARN from their work. If terrestrial radio starts paying royalties for the work they’re currently exploiting, the checks might get a little bigger.
Also, many independent American artists and record labels (and most record labels are actually small businesses) are receiving airplay overseas and currently don’t get to collect the performance royalties collected by the countries they are played in b/c the US doesn’t have a reciprocal trade agreement. The money US artists should be making goes to the governments of foreign countries.
There are two sides to this story and it’s not just about major labels. The major labels surely stand to benefit, but without them paying to fight the VERY powerful National Association of Broadcasters, artists wouldn’t stand a chance to collect even a penny from the work that radio currently gets to profit from for free. Please rethink your position on this. There are far more minority ARTISTS who are not getting paid by radio stations than there are minority broadcasters. Also, the bill also has a provision that gives low revenue stations a blanket license to pay these royalties for 5000 a year.
There is a link in the post to where you can find the details of Lessig’s presentation about the cost of the film and how much the rights cost. It’s a presentation that Time Warner had YouTube kill, but can still be found. I cannot seem to find the link to it right now though.
Back in the fifties and sixties the live performance was the product, not the recording. Records were given away at or near their cost of production to get people to come to live engagements. What you accept as the given world, my friend, has not always been the case and was specifically engineered by somebody with the vision to change it. It can and ought to be changed again.
I cite the place in HR 848 where it says that the artist’s portion is subject to other provisions of the contract. If that ain’t a hole big enough to drive a supertanker through I dunno what is. You have to be an awful trusting soul to believe most artists will see much of this new money. The suits will get nearly all of it.
Like other proponents of HR 848, you do not mention payola, the big stinking dead dog in the room. Why the silence? What’s up with that? By giving the labels and reps a new revenue stream that can be bargained up and down HR 848 has the effect of legitimizing this corrupt practice. How do you propose to address this major flaw in the legislation?
And finally, what say you to the accusation made by the industry folks I talked to, who say that the “performance rights” people intend to go after nightclub disk jockeys next?
Back in the fifties was back in the fifties, and now is now. Every musician i know tries to get every little stream he can, hoping it will add up to a living.
I know perfectly well what the provision about “subject to the artist’s contract…” is about: the major labels will try to collateralize the artist’s share against the label’s other advances to the artist. They do that with everything. It’s one of the reasons the major labels are dying. Most artists can make more money on a tenth of the total sales, owning their own masters.
You only want to talk about the world of the major labels. I already work in the post-majors world.
You challenge me to respond to a hypothetical question about a fantasy of going after DJ’s. I’ll respond if it ever happens.
In the meantime, please explain two things: How is keeping money out of the artist’s pocket going to fix payola? And why do you seem to think the big corporations have a right to make money off the creativity of someone else without compensation? You seem to think the big labels are villains in this situation (I agree) so why don’t you see big broadcasters in the same light?
My point in bringing up the free and low-cost record distribution of fifty years ago is that it was this free distribution which drove attendance at live musical events, which were at the time the staple of musicians’ income. Now free radio airplay does this. That’s the ONLY point on which the broadcasters are telling most of the truth.
You seem not to have bothered to read the article these comments are supposedly responding to. It takes broadcasters to task for their adaptation to the payola modus vivendi, which has made prevented most artists from getting airplay at all. I am on the board of a not for profit community station and am involved in low power FM too. This bill intends to squeeze them also, which should let you know the shots are being called here not for the benefit of artists, who know that low power and community radio do NOT make profits at the expense of ANYBODY, but that HR 848 is an operation conceived and led by the vampire suits. They already suck the blood of musicians and performers. If you were interested in getting more money for performers, you’d be mad at them, not at broadcast radio, and if the suits were anxious to put money in the pockets of musicians they would change their own business practices instead of looking far afield. With HR 848, the recording industry suits are saying “don’t look at us, look at the radio stations….” and you’re buying it.
The broadcasters are no less evil than the recording industry suits. But HR 848 is the recording industry suits’ power play to suck the blood of broadcast radio, and eventually deejays, restaurants and everybody else. So that makes them the biggest villains in this particular discussion. When the broadcast suits come up with a new way to stick their fingers in other peoples pockets I will be against that too, but that is not HR 848.
RIAA has, in concert with the Justice Dept prosecuted tens of thousands of people for downloading music on the net. Did any of this money go to artists? Of course not. You have an inordinate faith in their good will — like far too many artists — to believe they will not go after night club and other deejays next. RIAA has sought to impose additional fees on every recording device capable of recording or downloading music. That is why there are many more devices and technologies for sale in Korean and Japanese markets than there are here.
When did I ever say I was counting on the good will of the major labels? I’m counting on them to die off like the dinosaurs that they are. Actually they will be around in some form, as entities to license the back catalog, so yes they will be collecting some of this money, if the bill passes, for a long time. But the day of the majors having a lock on the talent is over. The organizations I mentioned above, who are pushing for this, and who have a track record of supporting artists, are trying to secure fair payment for the creative people when corporate interests use their creations.
Thank you for finally identifying your own axe to grind. What do you think about the exemption in the bill for low power radio?
I am well aware that the publishing interests, through BMI and ACAP, charge club owners, concert promoters and others for for the use of the compositions. If the Performance Right passes, some of the corporate interests, like the RIAA, may indeed try to duplicate that. They probably won’t succeed if they do, however, because they will not have the artists and the artists’ organizations in that coalition.
Also, you needn’t waste any more of your prose painting me as a supporter of the RIAA in any way.
I really wish you would quit calling the musicians that are fighting for their rights “suits”
The fact is this bill will allow performing artists, the smallest of small business owners, to get paid when their work is played on the radio. Radio stations that make little to no money have exemptions from paying this royalty. This bill is aimed mostly at large corporate radio stations that are making billions of dollars in ad revenue every year from playing music performed by artists who are not paid for those performances. It’s as simple as that.
Every country in the world aside from North Korea, China, Iran, Rwanda and the US pay this royalty. Because the US does not, independent American artists don’t get paid. This is a common right in the rest of the world for artists. Just not for the US because the NAB has fighting this bill since the invention of radio and winning. They use arguments like all the ones you have mentioned to say that this is all about record labels screwing the artists again. Sound Exchange, in spite of having record labels on its board actually DOES pay artists DIRECTLY. I know this, because I have received checks from them for the airplay that artists I have produced have garnered on satellite and internet radio. And that money is important to me, at least as a simple recognition of the fact that my work is not being exploited without compensating me.
Most jazz artists, many bluegrass and country artists all own their own masters and receive most of their airplay overseas. When the US finally begins paying this royalty, reciprocal royalty agreements will allow them to get paid for airplay in Japan, the UK, France and everywhere else in the world that American music is played.
I am a small business owner and work for mostly unsigned artists. We will all benefit from this bill if it should pass. Otherwise, we will go on being denied a right that is allowed in the rest of the world simply because the NAB has managed to dupe a lot of people into believing that this only benefits the labels.
Low power radio absolutely deserves an exception from this nonsense.
But without going after payola, something that NEITHER the proponents of this legislation address nor the idiots in broadcast radio want to talk about, HR 848 adds another revenue stream that the suits — and you know who I mean — the non-musicians working in the recording industry — can ratchet up or down to keep things as they are — playlists small and homogeneous, freezing out the artists they don’t like, to keep everything relentlessly commercial and keep their profits high by allowing only a relatively small number of big names to rake off a huge portion of the business.
Payola is already against the law, isn’t it? Why should one believe the rosy predictions of equity and compensation for a broader range of artists brought about by this legislation when we cannot or will not enforce the perfectly rational and equitable parts of laws already on the books?
Both the suits in the recording industry and those in the broadcast offices are villains in this piece, no doubt about it. The recording suits are slightly bigger villains because if they plant this toll booth in radio they WILL go after night club disk jockeys. The best thing that could happen would be to permit nobody two own more than one or two radio stations, period.
Payola is the dead dog in the room. If you don’t addresses it, and don’t clean it up, it just stinks louder, and will subvert any well-intentioned reforms, and continue to keep many artists off the air who should be heard.
The music industry’s business model has been dead for years. Radio is not far behind.
As a non-musician working in the music industry for over thirty years without ever wearing a suit to work, I think that these issues are important enough to discuss without resorting to stereotypes. Therefore I pledge to discuss the issues in terms of the issues, not in terms of easy labels and charged stereotypes, and invite you to do the same.
We can certainly agree that commercial radio is in an awful state today. I’m not sure why you think it’s a requirement that people who are only trying to get artists fair compensation must also propose legislation that simultaneously fixes everything that’s wrong with radio. And as much as you wish to rant about payola being responsible for it, you had better also acknowledge the role of the de-regulation (passed in the Clinton administration) which allowed the total conglomeration of the industry.
And I’m still wondering how you think that keeping money out of the pockets of musicians is supposed to fix payola.
Feel free to demonize the RIAA and the interest group they represent: the major labels. I won’t argue the point because I agree with you. Especially the RIAA’s policy of suing music’s biggest fans. i think that policy doesn’t belong anywhere except in the Annals of Stupidity. I’m sorry that some of the money from this performance right will flow to the major labels, but I am willing to see that happen if it also sets up an arrangement that provides a share directly to the creators, which this bill does.
And lets be clear: this bill would only require big businesses, the ones who are using the artists’ creations to make millions if not billions of dollars in profits, to pay the artists something for their works. There are exemptions in the bill for community radio and low power radio.
and off topic:
according to this NYT graphic, sotomayor is the most cited appellate judge by other judges and law reviews among all the suggested nominees:
http://www.nytimes.com/interac…..aphic.html
three questions–
who brought this bill forward? and who was on the committee?
was this bill in the coffers already or is new since dems have control of the house?
============here’s why====
checked http://www.newsmeat.com for cathy hughes’ political contributions to get a feel of whether this is paid for yet…
funny thing, head of a media conglomerate, and she has no contributions listed on newsmeat…
her son though, alfred liggins, is a different story.
medium-well dem contributor.
heavy harold ford banker, and, wait for it–blue dogs pac..
(edit-these are two separate links, should be maryland and wash dc.)
http://newsmeat.com/fec/bystat…..rst=alfred
http://newsmeat.com/fec/bystat…..rst=alfred
couldn’t find his wife’s name anywhere to check her, and can’t remember the site where you can track contributions by employer.
cathy hughes’ and radio one’s wiki have been revised recently…and they also own a tv station and at least one magazine. they were under scrutiny by the sec in 2007,no findings i could find but i didn’t dig that deep.
also didn’t get to http://www.opensecrets.org yet.
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this is ridiculous, if an artist’s contract is ripping htem off, it will still rip them off when a station pays more for their art. the money is not going to benefit them .
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well, just wanted to raise how that bill might have gotten to the house floor, say ‘hi’ to harold…bbl.
forgot to add–the new fees should be directly paid to the artist. period.should be a new and separate contractual agreement.should not be ‘grandfathered’ in under the old agreements. because this was not part of the picture when those contracts were signed and agreed to.
i don’t understand how it is legal to grandfather it in, even under ‘future earnings’…
dmac, the contracts in the music business make for a fascinating study, probably worthy of its own diary. For now, suffice to say that they are usually written with clauses that anticipate future earnings streams.
Of course the new fees should be paid directly to the artists. The unfortunate ones who succumbed to the siren song of a major label contract are probably out of luck. But as I point out above, more and more we are seeing artists in control of their own output, and for them the whole fee–including the label share–will be paid directly to them.
i just reread your post and saw that conyers sponsored this–he is on ethe contributions list of alfred liggins, ceo of radio one, son of cathy hughes…
and thom joyner is just backing his meal ticket. the more stations that have to pay for music, the more stations he will be on as they go out of business. radio one will make sure of that.
i only wish that it was an independent contract, signed by the artists who now know the pitfalls of contracts.
i hope they find a loophole in the ‘future earnings’ clauses.
and, please write a diary about it. and other aspects to educate us. pretty please.
many many years ago I worked-as a class 1 FCC tech-at a local radio station-AM R & R- in transition from local DJs playing 45s into a robo station with 12 hour tapes with canned music and commercials, no DJs, or any living person for that matter at the station. The station then morphed into an AM talk(conservative) station which was oh so much cheaper to run as you only had to pay the syndicator and did not have to keep logs of what music was played. The death of local AM radio happened about 30 years ago, I believe however that many artists were cheated out of their payments. That problem still needs to be addressed.
Why are you fixated on the “suit” comment and not addressing Bruce’s comments RE: payola?
I have no problems with “demonizing” a group that has made doing quality live music all but impossible for many small venues.
Hey, PW, I have addressed Bruce’s comments about payola several times; check the thread. He has never answered the questions I have raised.
His original post covered lots of ground. My responses have been entirely about the bill in question, the Performance Royalty act (other than a short aside about the Lessig film comment in one of Bruce’s replies.) The bill doesn’t address payola; why should it? As Bruce himself has stated above, payola is already illegal. This bill is about getting the creators some compensation when mega corporations use their creations for profit. I believe that his attempts to link the discussion to payola constitutes a red herring. The bill was never intended as a fix for all of radio’s troubles.
If you would like to discuss the problems of the radio industry, that would make a very interesting thread. The corporate labels, the independent promoters they use as bagmen, and payola would provide some of the villains in the discussion. As I stated above, you would also have to bring in the industry de-regulation which allowed ownership of major market stations to become concentrated in the hands of two or three companies. There are plenty of villains in that part of the story as well. Are you interested in lancing that whole boil?
PW, this comment doesn’t make it clear just what group you’re talking about. I don’t see what the corporate record labels have to do with this. Are you referring to the music publishers, who though BMI and ASCAP and SESAC charge the live music venues a license fee for using copyrighted compositions?