The music industry feels the time is right with Washington DC being all Democratic to get royalty fees for the artists through for the first time in history.

Radio would pay the artists for the right to play their music. Now, they pay the composers and music publishers, but not the artists.

It is estimated this would double the cost of playing music.

It is believed this is likely to happen.

It would undoubtedly create more layoffs.

So, the question is, how many more radio people should give up their jobs in order for the poor starving musicians to get even more money?

This will only hurt the artist's in the long run if it happens. Radio is basically free advertising for any new music which they produce. Radio sells music. Maybe these artists should get up off their asses and go out on tour and hit as many venues as possible. This is one big catch 22, if radio does not play their music, give away promo tickets and CD's, write them up on their websites, then people would probably be less likely to buy their CD's, purchase music online, or pay $100.00 plus for a pair of concert tickets should they actually go out on tour. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

The radio industry could just as easily turn the tables on them and charge air-time fees to play their music, commercial fees to advertise for their concerts, etc. etc.

....how many more radio people should give up their jobs.....

Darn it I say all of 'em!

Computers have made people obsolete. Computers can just play music for other computers.

Well, it's their product. How many more radio people have to lose their jobs in order to give the executives more money? What happens if it goes through? I guess we'll see more talk.

The RIAA is really pushing for this...did any of you hear the director's speech during the Grammy telecast?

How about the pay that goes to the music publisher and composer gets diluted so that the same payments are being made, but the artist gets their take as well. Yeah, that would be a reduction for the composer and publisher, but both would be nothing without the artist.

I second that.

These days, the publisher adds a whole lot LESS value. They should surrender some of that back to the person actually building the value in the first place, or step up and start embracing new media proper, so there is more revenue there overall.

Right now, they are just squabbling with everybody they can, looking for a bigger slice of what is a shrinking pie, and it's shrinking because they've got a head in the sand attitude about music distribution and promotion these days.

That's a good point, aok... perhaps the artists should follow the radio model... if a few people aren't making enough money, layoff the rest!
(Or for that matter, they place a tax on musical instrument sales, because the instruments could one day be used to compete with established artists! )

Some very good points gentlemen. The pie analogy is a great one. I think that the RIAA wants to make more pie with fewer ingredients.

This looks really good for the artists on the surface, but it is not a benevolent gesture. Keeping the current system, cutting out publishers and dividing broadcast compensation between the artists and composers makes more sense. What the RIAA are not saying publicly is that they are potentially screwing everybody except the very top moneymakers. The new bigger pie will have an even smaller portion of crumbs left in the dish for most artists.

"So, the question is, how many more radio people should give up their jobs in order for the poor starving musicians to get even more money?"

None. Artists do not hire and fire local talent. Radio clusters hire and fire local talent. Poor starving musicians are not served by commercial radio. Hell, most upper middle class musicians are not served by commercial radio. Commercial radio does not exist to serve the public, the artists or the personalities. It only exists to make money.

The commercial radio industry has primarily focused on artists that were established almost entirely by the corporate structure of the recording industry. The RIAA has no interest in what benefits individual artists, only the recording industry as a whole. On a national level, radio and music are both part of the same big business. The media industry is simply trying to rewrite the rules to benefit the media industry.

It seems to me that the money is always going sideways and not down to the roots. This so-called "royalty" idea will enable programmers to have very narrow playlists. By making it prohibitively expensive to try new music, the rules will keep out everybody except the most saturated artists from the most entrenched record labels. This is not about creating diversity, it is about further consolidation.

If one charges stations more money across the board for musical content, it forces independent broadcasters and regional operations to bleed even more from already tight margins. Or, strictly limit themselves to labels and artists that have "wink-nudge-royalty-cost-offset-programs" in place. Stations that serve a smaller market or a niche audience will still be dropping like flies, but these rules would ensure that they do not have a future revival.

Once the proposed system flushes the last remnants of originality from the airwaves, broadcast royalties might never have a chance to be equitable. If an independent release was used, it would not surprise me at all to find out that a big network was charged once and only once for the station of origination, and not for every syndicated stick that put the birdy on the air. Would any of us bat an eye if we found out that the undercurrents of the system included "flat rate" or "whole catalog" funny business from publishers and labels? Or a "royalty rebate" that was essentially electronic payola between the skyscrapers?

New rules or not, Bono and Britney are not going to go hungry any time soon. Van Halen can always count on properly sorted candy backstage. The publishing vampires are stocked with plenty of fresh blood. Record execs have coke and chicks to spare. Either way, it makes little or no difference to the multi-millionaires and billionaires. At the other end of that spectrum are longtime touring musicians who depend on the local candle for promotion and spins. An old adage bears repeating: Wanna make records? Make records. Wanna make money? Tour all the time. One could easily add: Fall out of favor with the big company? Get used to tiny halls and couch surfing.

So, why change it around? Because commercial radio networks, publishing houses and major labels are financially a lot like GM right now. Unlike GM, big media believes that it can force American consumers to buy their crummy products. If the industry controls every aspect from recording to publishing to royalties to radio to reviews to social networking sites to big box retail, they need not worry about providing anything more than what they decide the audience wants. The boardrooms will determine which artists live and die in their current perception of the entire marketplace. They do not see that their business model is already as good as dead.

Almost 40,000 albums are released annually. Music is a big industry, but not all of it is big. Thirty percent is made up of small businesses and small businesspeople. This does not count the local punk band with a pile of CD-Rs, or the hundreds of really tiny independent labels, or the many thousands of free "net-only" releases. We are talking just shy of 40k different products all nicely done in shrink wrap with barcodes and the word "incorporated" printed somewhere on the cover. All of them are available on-line or mail order. A sizable number are available in brick and mortar outlets. That is a whole lot of talent for the radio industry to sort through every year, eh?

Unfortunately, forty-freaking-thousand means diddly squat to virtually everyone in commercial broadcasting because only a fraction of those releases ever come down the pike. Programming is centralized and airplay is rationed out like water on the Gobi. Folks want to keep their jobs, so they play what they are told to play and play and play. Hosts make a big deal on the big show about how big these big artists are and how they should stay big forever. This makes for stations that are often boring as all get out, but still viewed by corporate as a viable way to make money.

Of course, this nutty proposal has the potential to rid all stations of diverse sounds and voices. Public and community radio would not be able to afford much recorded music if they were not excluded from these rules in some fashion. It is stupid and ironic when you consider how many titles these stations feature on the air, how religiously they promote upcoming shows, how often they break new artists, how they sustain old favorites and how much merchandise they sell in their on-line stores.

The current benefits of airplay are tangible to both the stations and the artists. The only place one consistently hears live music, local music, new music and legendary performers is public radio. Well established genres like traditional country, blues, jazz and classical music barely even exist in the commercial realm. Many performers are able to eek out a decent living because of exposure on non-commercial radio.

Unlike many of their corporate counterparts, independent artists love, nurture and depend on community and public broadcasting. It is a thriving symbiotic relationship. There is quite a bit of imagination on the left end of the dial. I could see musicians and stations focusing on some sort of Creative Commons licensing route. Would the recording industry attack PRI and NPR for this too? It might result in not for profit operations ignoring the fame machine altogether.

Like the ridiculous stance the recording industry took toward non-commercial netcasting, this silly proposal could also severely hamper the potential long-term viability of rural and suburban LPFM. With rigid FCC guidelines to follow, outside corporate content control is the last thing that hobbyists and community broadcasters should have to face.

Artists deserve a full share of compensation, but the end result of these new rules is not pretty. Less music of any kind, a tightly controlled number of songs, and fewer musicians in rotation with huge media and record companies controlling all of it. This is exactly what is happening now, but new rules could make radio playlists even less interesting and much more permanent.

Thank you for indulging me. If you are up for some more reading, this report on commercial airplay is interesting:

http://www.futureofmusic.org/research/playlisttrackingstudy.cfm

The artists who have signed deals with the major record labels are initially signed to 360 deals. The fees and payments are all negotiated as part of the contract. The artists and performers will see none of this new found income. The new fees will only help save the record companies, which are bleeding money right now.