A2IM: unanswered questions: II
p2pnet.net news:- For a brief period, yesterday, we ran a letter sent by well-known Nashville entertainment lawyer Fred Wilhelms, who’s also a regular p2pnet contributor, to A2IM (American Association of Independent Music) boss Rich Bengloff (right).
The subject?
The fact A2IM is among corporate music groups, including the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada, “which are in lockstep behind ex-RIAA unit SoundExchange, which is in turn right behind the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to boost royalty fees for 2006-2010 paid by Net radio stations for streaming music,” we stated.
“Sorry,” we said about an hour later. “We’ve temporarily taken this story offline,” adding we expected Bengloff to be answering Wilhelms’ interesting in the (Confucian sense) questions a little later.
It seems Bengloff got cold feet again, so here’s the still unanswered letter from Wilhelms >>>>>>>>>>>
Dear Mr. Bengloff,
I have noted that your organization has spoken vigorously in favor of the Internet radio royalty rates set by the CRB and due to go into effect on July 15, 2007.
A few things puzzle me about A2IM’s position, and I am hoping that you can clarify them for me.
Music from independent artists and labels make up 30% of what we get to hear on Internet radio. This is substantially more than we hear on terrestrial radio, where the great majority of music comes from the major labels of the RIAA. Live365.com claims that 70% of the music heard on their client stations comes from independent labels and artists. That’s thousands of stations, and tens of thousands of hours of webcasting independent music.
Live365 has stated that without permanent relief from the CRB decision, they will go off the air on July 15 because the only option is bankruptcy. There are thousands of other stations that face the same choices, many of whom feature music from labels that are members of your organization.
Yet A2IM steadfastly supports the rate structure that will drive these stations off the air.
My first questions are simple:
Who is going to pay your members their performance royalties if these stations that play their music now are are gone?
How are you going to make up for those stations going silent?
How are your artists going to replace the promotional value of getting heard on Internet radio?
If anyone should understand the value of a vigorous, varied and thriving Internet broadcast environment, it ought to be A2IM. The more webcasters there are, each paying a reasonable royalty, the better the chance the independent artist is going to get paid, because there will be stations that play those artists, and promote their live appearances, and sell their CDs. Yet publicly, you’re supporting a rate schedule that is going to eliminate the very stations that play your artists. promote their gigs and sell their CDs..
And, to be completely frank, the settlement “offers” that SoundExchange has made in recent press releases are nothing but window dressing. All they do is postpone the problem while imposing limits on both revenue and listeners that will spell immediate death for any webcaster popular enough to grow beyond those limits. God help the webcaster who plays one of your artists who begins to actually attract a following. God’s got to help him because SoundExchange and A2IM aren’t going to, either under the CRB rate or the current SoundExchange “settlement” offer.
So that leads to my next simple question:
Do you think your label members would agree to a rule that if they sold “X” number of CDs in a year they would be forced to pay retroactive membership fees to the RIAA?
The webcaster who goes one dollar over the revenue cap, or one listener over the usage cap that SoundExchange has included in the press release “offer” is facing an equivalent dilemma. I would have thought that A2IM, made up largely of new and ambitious labels, would be acutely sensitive to arbitrary limits to growth that punish success.
I have read with interest your wholehearted embrace of the RIAA’s campaign to get terrestrial radio to pay performance royalties. I would like to see a performance royalty in place as well. However, I’ve read on your own website that you realize that A2IM is going to have to provide the “poster children” for this campaign because no one can truly be sympathetic to a major label artist asking for more money. Yet, independent artists and labels will share in less than 10% of those royalties given the current terrestrial playlist bias in favor of the major labels.
And that brings us to my final question:
Why is your organization lending its name and numbers to a campaign that gives your constituency so little and gives the RIAA so much?
In regard to these three issues, I really fail to see how your organization deserves to put “independent” in its name, as you are following the RIAA lead without much “independent” thought entering into it. To an interested outsider, it certainly looks like you aren’t very independent when it comes to supporting things the RIAA wants.
When I heard of the establishment of your organization (and I even attended several discussions at SXSW about your plans on behalf of some small label clients), I had hopes that you would truly bring a new viewpoint to the conversations about the future of the music business. I think the time is perfect for you to raise that truly independent voice.
I look forward to your response.
Fred Wilhelms
Stay tuned.
Also See:
ran a letter – A2IM: unanswered questions, June 18, 2007
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