Webcasting: ‘reverse payola’
p2pnet news view | music:- Now the word is out on what SoundExchange plans to do, or not do, about online broadcasters, I have to wonder where this leaves the listener and, ultimately, the buyers of music?
As I read John Simson’s comments – “I think the message to them is: ‘Look, Monday’s not that magical a day. It’s going to be business as usual at SoundExchange – trying to process data, trying to get deals done. We’re not gonna be filing lawsuits’.” – the first thing I notice is their ambiguity. I have to ask what about Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, next week and so on?
I only listen to a couple of webcasters myself, and they play strictly independent music. But this has raised enough doubt in the minds of many musicians and webcasters that I expect a number of them will call it quits.
Because this isn’t about the money. It’s about control. It’s about what gets listened to and when. It’s about being able to play the music you want to play when you want to play it. It’s about nudging out the little guy.
I like to refer to the webcasting issues as “reverse payola”.
Instead of the labels paying to be played, you now have the radio stations (webcasters) having to pay to promote the artist and label. Not only do they have to buy the music they want to play (it’s sent to terrestrial stations free, or hand delivered by an Indie promoter) they have to pay to get it.
Reminds me of the Tom Sawyer fence painting episode.
But let’s not get side-tracked. In Europe, terrestrial radio stations pay a performance royalty. In the US they don’t. This is just the first step, which was enabled by the DMCA, and later CARP hearings. It comes down to webcasters paying more to webcast than the terrestrial stations stations pay to play music over the airwaves.
As we move forward, you’ll be seeing more and more terrestrial stations dropping music and moving toward talk radio. I expect we’ll start seeing that trend in webcasters as well.
These laws were passed by Congress (I have little respect for either side at this point) with major lobbying efforts from the major labels, the RIAA, SoundExchange, and people who can afford access and the expenses involved.
The RIAA is a lobbying group. That’s its job definition. Don’t hate the lobbyist. They’re just copyright mercenaries doing what they’re paid to do by their masters, the major labels.
So don’t waste your breath on John Simson, Cary Sherman, or the rest of them.
Instead, use it on the member labels.
Bill Evans – p2pnet
(Evans founded Boycott-RIAA.com, but is no longer associated with it.]
Also See:
word is out – Small broadcasters live another day, July 16, 2007
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July 16th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
I never have understood why any kind of radio station has to pay for playing music. What they are doing is promoting the band/artist and getting the artist money. Why would a company pay for something just to give someone else a chance to make money?
In fact when you listen to a commercial that means a company paid the radio station to put that commercial on the air so that company can get the word out about themselves and sell whatever they have to sell. So, does that mean bands should start paying for their songs to be heard, because they want to sell their music?
July 17th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
to KB: music was licensed to radio broadcasters at no charge, for the same reasons you said, it was thought that it would increase sales. radio advertisement paid for employees of the stations, and cost to operate, and profit hopefully.
Now they will just have to charge advertisers more, which in turn will raise product costs somewhere down the line. Inevitably, the radio stations will turn into more ads than airtime.
it means that the RIAA has yet more control and the artist gets screwed because he WONT get paid from those sales. Not to mention, the consumer. I forgot FM still existed personally.