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Lead Pumpkin Smasher Billy Corgan spoke to Congress last week on behalf of performers [Ed. note: And "big media."]. Corgan argued that a law made 80 years ago for reasons long past needs to be changed.
Tom Joyner speaks today on behalf of minority broadcasters and takes an opposing view to Corgan. Joyner believes minority broadcasters are more threatened by an additional fee for playing music than the average American broadcaster.
Radio in general is threatened by this new fee.
BY: Pattie Lee
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You know what. This is not such a bad thing. Maybe this will mean radio stations will play more than the Top 40 hits.
The Law that already is in place pays songwriters royalties for their played songs.
What Corgan and the musicFIRST coalition is trying to do is expand the current law to cover the perfomance artists as well. Therefor, for example, when a band's hit song is a Cover song (think "Blue Monday" cover by Orgy, or "Landslide" cover by the Smashing Pumpkins), the original author is paid (New Order or Stevie Nicks, respectively), but the actual artist who is performing the song is NOT paid.
Other than North Korea and Iran (I'm not making this up), every OTHER country pays such royalties.
Next time I would recommend reading the source articles and the proposed law a little bit more deeper to get a few more facts.
When radio stations are making BILLIONS on advertising revenue based on the Performer's songs, the PERFORMERS deserve to get thrown a few pennies.
I think the record labels are making much more than the radio stations. The fee could put small market radio stations out of business. And with advertiser dollars getting smaller and staff cuts, you may not hear any music on the radio if this fee goes through. I'm not against giving performers money, but don't you think they get something out of the music being aired on the radio? Is there no value in that?
Yeah, and in the process crush any station not owned by a corporate behemoth. You do your homework and read a bit deeper, huh?
(2) establish a flat annual fee in lieu of payment of royalties for individual terrestrial broadcast stations with gross revenues of less than $1.25 million and for noncommercial, public broadcast stations;
(3) grant an exemption from royalty payments for broadcasts of religious services and for incidental uses of musical sound recordings
...so the bill already contains a big adjustment for small stations and noncommercial stations.
How's that for doing homework and reading deeper, Tankboy?
I saw that, but without defining that flat annual fee, I still view this bill as a danger to smaller stations.
Edit *It's SESAC not SEAC
[Warning, nerdy music business student reply ahead.]
In some cases (cough Clear Channel) the radio stations could afford to pay the performance royalties and not even sweat it. Granted there are those local college radio stations and indie stations that would go under if they are expected to pay both licensing and performances royalties.
What they should be working on is proposing different guidelines based on the status of the radio station. Maybe allow colleges a non-for-profit status while the major stations (cough Clear Channel) fall under the for-profit radio stations.
Thanks for the edit.
And there was nothing nerdy about your response ... it obviously makes the most sense to handle it that way.
Regardless of who is right here, the fact that it's taken until 2009 for this law regarding terrestrial radio to be addressed only proves that the industry is still behind the times in adapting to how the business is changing.
I usually make it habit to adopt the opposite viewpoint of Billy Corgan whenever possible, and that applies here as well. This was the same congressional hearing where he claimed that a Ticketmaster/LiveNation merger would be a good thing.