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News From Audio Graphics:
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Artists Coming After Radio With Pay for Play |
It's time. Radio industry executives need to lift their heads from the sand, and quit being fixated on a satellite radio merger that represents only a sliver of the cost associated with a new problem they've been warned was coming.
Remember the internet radio royalty rates that where confirmed in March, and the ongoing internet radio industry fight against these unfair fees that broadcasters wouldn't join? Well, gotcha!
The record industry is coming after broadcasters to pay the same remarkably high fees that it's trying to kill/control the online radio industry with. Recording artists and music companies are set to release details today on how they want to give "...performers the right to receive compensation when their music is broadcast by radio stations."
Mr. or Ms. Radio Executive, let me explain what's happening. Instead of helping online radio keep its fees equitable with yours, you're now going to have to fight like hell to keep your music fees away from theirs. If broadcast radio is forced to pay the same "performance fees" that internet radio must pay, the cost of running a terrestrial radio station will go through the roof.
Here's the ironic part, the one that indicates there's going to be a shift towards radio creating its own stars: Labels, music companies, and artists that wouldn't have made a penny without radio exposure now have the audacity to demand that the media which made them, must pay them - more.
Those major broadcasters that were noted not to be in Washington a few weeks ago, when the online radio industry people were pleading for support, are now being forced to face the same problem: Pay additional fees over what BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC are charging for the privilege of giving artists exposure.
It's time all artists and record companies demanding these new fees were ejected from radio programming, and for radio to start giving some time playing the thousands of quality artists that were ignored in the past. Three weeks after this occurs the removed artists will become distant memory in all but a few persons' minds. Use Howard Stern as an example. He's keeping those few million on Sirius happy, but there aren't many terrestrial listeners who care much about what he does or says anymore.
If you're an artist who's not receiving radio airplay, you're out of ears, out of mind, out of luck. (Just ask any independent artists who've been trying to get radio exposure what that feels like.)
Let the backlash begin. It's time.
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Related Story:
CBS2.com
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