Have you heard about the latest bullshit gouge attempt by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)? Now that the organization has successfully devastated the Internet radio community, it’s targeting terrestrial radio for an ever bigger chunk of a pie that the RIAA doesn’t deserve.
The RIAA is doing this, of course, because the recording industry as we know it is dying. The digital age has been brutal to it, and what we are now witnessing are the death throes of the great beast as it flaps its tendrils wildly trying to grab on to anything it can to keep from going under.
In other words, it’s not dying with dignity.
Here’s the back-story: Under current law, terrestrial radio stations are exempt from paying royalties to record companies because, in a nutshell, the record companies greatly benefit from that radio exposure. Sounds like a fair swap, right? Free promotion for free music. However, as we speak, the RIAA is preparing to fight this exemption in Congress.
Lord of Christ, how I despise the RIAA. Always have. It’s nothing but a giant steaming pile of soul-sapping corporate lawyer warthogs who don’t give a dried-out frumunda ball about the consumer or the artists they claim to represent: Remember when it paid a $144 million settlement in 2002 for price fixing? Remember when it sued Brianna Lahara, that 12-year-old file-sharing menace to society, for copyright infringement? Remember how it successfully lobbied Congress to amend the Copyright Act with a self-serving “work for hire” clause, how it crushed Internet radio by raising royalties tenfold, and how it continually moves toward decreasing the amount of royalties they pay the artist while at the same time increasing the royalties they collect from radio and other broadcasters.
Indeed, the entire RIAA operation is inherently corrupt. Here’s why: The RIAA collects royalties on copyrighted music. That money is retained by the RIAA until the artist in question pays a membership fee. Only after paying the fee can the artist collect on his or her ever-diminishing royalty. Anything unclaimed the RIAA keeps.
Talk about a triple-dip. And presumptuous! It would be like a stranger collecting the 100 bucks your friend Joe owes you, then turning around and charging you $25 to get it from the stranger. What gives the RIAA the right to collect your debts without asking?
According to the L.A. Times, Mary Wilson (co-founder of the original Supremes) is against the exemption for radio. “After so many years of not being compensated,” Wilson said, “it would be nice now at this late date to at least start. They’ve gotten 50-some years of free play. Now maybe it’s time to pay up.”
First off Mary, I highly doubt you didn’t get paid. Maybe you didn’t get your fair share of the pie, but that’s on your record label. If anyone owes you money, it’s Berry Gordy. Certainly not Clear Channel. What part of “free advertising” do you not understand? Part of the reason for your worldwide fame is because your music was played on stations around the globe. That made you famous. It’s not radio’s fault you didn’t negotiate a better deal with Motown. And stop whining about file-sharing. You can’t, as an artist, release something into the world and expect to contain it. Why would you want to? Art is a form of expression, and once you express something, once you release it into the world, it becomes part of that world. Any attempt to forestall that process misses the point of art.
So, yes, I have a bias. I do not much care for the RIAA or its sniveling members. But for the sake of fairness, I’m going to give its position due consideration. Because I am square and balanced, I will ponder the question at hand: Should radio stations pay for the songs they play?
It all comes down to the question of which has more value—the content or the commercial? It’s the eternal conundrum of art vs. commerce, really. And I happen to know a simple way to figure it out, once and for all: Let the market sort it out.
All you have to do is remove the radio exemption (forcing radio to pay royalties), then, in turn, allow those stations to charge for advertising (i.e. playing songs). The ensuing negotiations would, over time, give us the exact value of every song on the play list, negative or positive.
For instance, say American Recordings is trying to introduce a song by a new band called Jimmy Blandy and the Cold Dry Toast Suckers. Well, it’s likely the record company would pay to have it played because Jimmy and the Suckers are untested, with no name recognition. So that song would retain a negative value.
However, if Johnny Cash returned from the dead with a song he wrote in Heaven containing the answers to the universe, with some background vocals from God, well, that song would probably have a high positive value because radio would pay good and plenty for the right to play that song. Indeed, every song—from Jimmy Blandy to dead Johnny and everything in between—would have its own negotiation and eventually a value would be given to them all. Of course, those values would fluctuate as the worth of any song is in permanent flux, but that fluctuation only makes the song values truer.
So, the question becomes: Under this new system of truer song values, how would the recording industry fare compared to the old system of free promotion for free music? My guess is that it would lose. Because this society tends to value commercial over content. Because the RIAA is nothing without radio. Because if the recording industry doesn’t back off, the radio stations just might wise up and unify. Then they can just turn around and say, “You know what RIAA? Fuck you and your pissy-lilly union music. We’ll stop playing RIAA bands altogether. We’ll find our own stable of performers and make them pop stars by shear virtue of broadcasting the hell out of ’em. Just watch how quickly you lose members then. Pissants! Death to the RIAA!”
Click here to see hilarious anti file sharing video
Click here to search for specific artists and their current RIAA status
EJD
05/28/07
Comments (4)
I was the Program Director for an Internet radio station based here in San Diego, which is no longer in existence thanks, in part, to the RIAA and DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Here is some historical perspective to add to Ed Decker’s excellent (as usual!) column.
At the start of broadcasting, more than 50 years ago, the Music Business was still a growth industry. Record manufacturing wasn’t an Industry; the field was wide-open to anyone with a microphone and record lathe. (Before 1933, there was no audio tape, either; phonograph records were cut directly from a performance.) Records were recorded at different speeds and were cut with both horizontal and vertical modulation. It was a real mess. The Recording Industry Association of America was established to create technical standards for the recording industry. But, since there was still plenty of competition, they all recognized that the promotional function of airplay. Terrestrial broadcast stations were not subjected to such onerous fees. The RIAA developed 78RPM and made sure that ALL recording machines (and players) revolved at the same speed. Over the years, the RIAA evolved into the industry’s trade organization.
Now, the Recording Industry is dominated by 5 or 6 multi-national conglomerates and the RIAA has evolved into their mouthpiece.
Remember DAT (digital audiotape)? The RIAA made sure consumers had a hard time remembering such technological advances. Under its current administration, it has now decided that it is also a collector of royalties on behalf of the American Record industry.
This clearly is a role that was never intended for this organization. first of all, there already is both ASCAP and BMI! And, even as recently as the 1950s and ‘60s, composers and musicians have been blatantly abused and cheated of their royalties by many less-than-scrupulous record companies. Now, the RIAA wants us to believe that they are the representatives of those artists. What gall!
Death to the RIAA!
Michael-Leonard Creditor
Clairemont
Posted by Michael Leonard | June 5, 2007 3:07 AM
Posted on June 5, 2007 03:07
Ed:
Where exactly did get you get that Internet radio has been "crushed" by the diaRIAA? From what I understand, the newly crafted CRB royalty payments are due July 15th. In the meantime, H.R. 2060, which has the potential to overturn the new rates has 100 co-sponsors. Do your readers a favor and learn the facts before you go spouting off about how webcasting has been crushed. Online broadcasting is not dead just yet.
Also, if terrestrial radio were to go silent tomorrow, it would not be a big loss to any serious connoisseur of music. Why should terrestrial radio get a sweetheart deal from the diaRIAA at the same time it is -using your own terminology- crushing web radio? Web radio is ten thousand times better than terrrestrial radio and exposes serious listeners to *real* music and diverse bands. Terrestrial radio should not be getting a free ride. Let them pay the *same* rates the CRB wants Internet radio to pay.
BTW - Who listens to Clear Channel crap anyway? None of the *good* stations in San Diego are Clear-crap owned, so I say let the airwaves become free of Brittney Christina teeny bopper boy band crap forever.
If you're going to continue writing about this topic, I suggest you become better informed. You can start here: http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/052907/index.shtml
Regards,
A.A. Abulifia
Posted by A.A. Abulifia | June 5, 2007 3:09 AM
Posted on June 5, 2007 03:09
Thanks for you letter A.A. When I wrote "crushed" I meant devastated, as in, the news of the decision to increase royalty rates was devastating to the internet radio community. You are right that I should have made it clearer that they have not been "crushed" as in "put out of business" just yet. But make no mistake, the decision will change internet radio as we know it and have the effect of a crushing blow.
As for why terrestrial radio deserves a better deal than internet radio, the answer is simple: Listeners! The record companies need traditional radio way more than it needs internet radio to promote it's music. It's a leverage thing. Internet radio has little or none.
Ed
Posted by ed decker | June 5, 2007 3:11 AM
Posted on June 5, 2007 03:11
I was fascinated by [this article]. Mainly because something very much like his scenario has already taken place in
the history of the American music business.
The year was 1940, and then, as now, the radio industry was fighting
over the level of royalties they would pay to broadcast songs. Only
the villain wasn¹t the recording industry: it was the American
Society of Composers, Artists and Publishers (ASCAP), a trade
association whose entire purpose was (and is) to collect royalties
from public performances, recordings and broadcasts of songs and
distribute them to their writers and publishers. In addition to
having a reputation for being hard-nosed in its business tactics and
not always scrupulous in rewarding the actual creators of these
songs, as opposed to the companies that published and marketed them
(sound familiar?), ASCAP was also openly racist. Until Duke
Ellington¹s first manager and publisher, Irving Mills, filed an
appeal to admit Ellington moneymaker, Irving Berlin not allowed to join ASCAP and therefore could not collect royalties
beyond what their publishers paid them voluntarily. (This explains
why Black composer-bandleader Jelly Roll Morton died in penury and
ill health in 1941, even though his song ³King Porter Stomp² had been
Benny Goodman¹s star-making record and was one of the standards of
the swing era.)
When ASCAP demanded a major increase in royalty payments from radio
stations in 1940, negotiations broke down and the radio industry did
exactly what [you] suggest they do now if the RIAA¹s proposal for
broadcast royalties goes into effect. They started their own
association of songwriters and publishers, Broadcast Music, Inc.
(BMI), and used music exclusively from BMI¹s writers and publishers.
Since ASCAP had locked up most of the talent in the most popular
musical genres of the time tunes and commercial swing ignored, including white country-and-western and Black rhythm-and-
blues. As a result, those kinds of music got far more exposure on
radio than they had before, new audiences were exposed to them, they
became much more popular and eventually they fused to form rock ¹n¹
roll, followed by soul music and rap. In other words, virtually all
the kinds of music CityBeat writes about descend from the artists who
won their first mass audiences thanks to ASCAP¹s obstinacy towards
the radio industry and the resulting formation of BMI. Is it too much
to hope for that that history repeats and RIAA¹s overreaching on the
radio royalty issue brings currently underground genres to the ears
of millions of people who¹d like them if only they had a chance to
hear them?
Mark Gabrish Conlan
[This letter originally appeared as a letter to the editor in CityBeat magazine, where the article was originally published].
Posted by Mark Gabrish Conlan | June 28, 2007 11:08 PM
Posted on June 28, 2007 23:08