RIAA Seeks Royalties From Radio 555
SierraPete writes "First it was Napster; then it was Internet radio; then it was little girls, grandmothers, and dead people. But now our friends at the RIAA are going decidedly low-tech. The LA Times reports that the RIAA wants royalties from radio stations. 70 years ago Congress exempted radio stations from paying royalties to performers and labels because radio helps sell music. But since the labels that make up the RIAA are not getting the cash they desire through sales of CDs, and since Internet and satellite broadcasters are forced to cough up cash to their racket, now the RIAA wants terrestrial radio to pay up as well."
Give them what they want! (Score:5, Interesting)
This would basically ruin both CC and the RIAA. Without the radio telling the masses what to like, CD sales are doomed.
Re:Give them what they want! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Give them what they want! (Score:4, Insightful)
No? What? What's "reality TV" got to do with music television? Nothing?... =V
Re:Give them what they want! (Score:5, Funny)
MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken.
Re:Give them what they want! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't get it.
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Think Spice Girls.
Everyone calm down, I think this is the onion (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet you someone reported the onion as fact again... everyone just calm down.
Re:Give them what they want! (Score:4, Insightful)
New Rules Charge Free Music Too! (Score:5, Insightful)
You won't be able to give your music away in the future [slashdot.org]. Giving the MAFIAA a new revenue stream only gives them more money to do more harm. The only place to stop them is at the voting booth.
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Payola (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA already pays the radio stations to tell people what to like. They have all but admitted to manipulating playlists via bribes because they acknowledge that radio play == sales. So I'm not entirely sure how they are now going to argue that radio play is suddenly detrimental. Particularly not when they're still actively engaged in it. (though now via a corporate shell-game to side-step the FCC)
My guess, is that the RIAAs is trying to put an end to payola. If the stations legally 'owe' the RIAA money for broadcasting, then they can negotiate airplay without having to write checks. They'll just grant the broadcasters performance rights 'coupons' for certain artists/tracks. Nothing really changes, the labels cut down some of the cost-of-doing business.
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Of course, this is the RIAA so egregious is the silent e.
Re:Payola (Score:4, Insightful)
It gives the labels a payola workaround.
PROGRAM MANAGER: We really want to give this awesome song some airplay, but it costs too much; can you give us a break on the air-time fee?
LABEL: Sure, but you'll have to play this list of 10 crappy songs for every time you play awesome song.
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I see 2 ways to get more income:
1) More ads.
2) Charge the content producers to air their music.
2 sounds stupid at first, but if the options are 'massive advertising' or 'pay the radio a few cents to play your song', I know which would be cheaper and better. The consumer (that's us) loses either way, and the RIAA is the only one who gains.
'Overpaid Shock Jocks' exist because they bring in listeners, no matter how stupid any sing
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But that doesn't mean anything other than that your money will go more directly from your pocket to the RIAA's than before.
Before: You -> Radio ~> CD sales -> RIAA
After: You -> Radio -> RIAA
Radio music causes people to want to buy CDs of music they like. Previously your money funded advertising which provided money for the RIAA in the form of CD sales.
I'd like to think that your option would be the one chosen, and that radio stations would listen to those who pa
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This would basically ruin both CC and the RIAA.
Yeah. Let them eat their seed corn. Gobble it up boys.
Re:Give them what they want! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give them what they want! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Give them what they want! (Score:5, Interesting)
Clear Channel and the other huge companies could and would pay without even flinching, and just jack up their ad rates to cover the increased costs (and then some, since they can now blame RIAA for pretty much ANY amount of rate increase). Big Media wins, makes more money, gets bigger.
Advertisers now have Big Media sucking up a larger chunk of their advertising budgets, so they have to make cuts somewhere. Since the smaller, independent stations (are there any left?) have to pay RIAA too, their costs go up. With smaller audience shares, they are now even less cost effective than before. Advertisers pull ads from small stations to pay for the ads on big stations, small stations are now in an even bigger hurt than before.
Because the FCC has been spreading its legs for media companies for so long - and Congress is too clueless to notice or care -- Big Media is now able to suck up even more smaller stations as their financial position becomes untenable. Big Media wins again, makes even MORE money, gets even bigger. Talk radio and NPR survive as the only alternative to what Clear Channel, Journal Broadcast and the other handful of winners want you to hear.
This would be a huge long term win for the handful of huge media companies that now control most of the market anyway. Unfortunately, I suspect it would be a Pyrrhic vistory. They've alreay driven millions to satellite radio, and this would probably drive nails into terrestrial broadcast radio's coffin at an even faster rate.
Once the sattelite channels are devoting as much time to advertising as they are to music, we're right back to where we started - buy now you're PAYING to listen to it, which works out far better for the media companies. You're not naieve enough to think THAT won't happen, are you?
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Once the sattelite channels are devoting as much time to advertising as they are to music, we're right back to where we started - buy now you're PAYING to listen to it, which works out far better for the media companies. You're not naieve enough to think THAT won't happen, are you?
Considering how many people dropped XM over the suspension of Opie and Anthony, I can safely say that I wouldn't be alone in dropping satellite radio due to ads on the music channels. XM and Sirius aren't just competition with each other and terresticle radio, but also with iPods and other media jukeboxes. You don't have ads on your own MP3 player, and you control the music on there, so these broadcasters can't really turn to commercials. Of course, they could increase the subscription rate, and I'd rat
Proof that musicians are deluded (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no! You mean those poor musicians have to keep working, just like the rest of us!? What is this world coming to!?
Does an older assembly line worker at Ford continue to get paid every time someone drives a classic Mustang? Does an Amish quilt maker get a nickel every time someone gets cold and covers up? Of course not! Then what makes musicians so special?
Idiots. Get back to work!
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It may not be suicide when they'll be able to point to the effect on the sales, and lie about it, say "Ahah! Piracy!" Despite the fact everyone (other than them and the legislators) will know darn well they are bringing it upon themselves.
...And they get retaliatory legislation from their lobbyists (using extreme drop in sales as justification) that makes electronic sharing punishable by death, imposes a mandatory computer and CD-tax whose proceeds will be paid to the RIAA, and permits the RIAA to for
Re:Absolutely! Strong support! (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet "radio" is going back to congress asking to be treated like a real radio station and get back to a zero royalty rate. The RIAA wants to head this off and say that real radio needs to pay too. It won't work, but they are going to give it a go...
Re:Absolutely! Strong support! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no it wouldn't. Don't fool yourself. People who listen to radio, for the most part listen to music the RIAA controls because they like the music. That's why people pirate the music the RIAA controls. Clear Channel exists because there are lots of people that like its product. Sad? Perhaps, but no less true.
From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah because they should be allowed to sit around all day earning money just because they are so great.
Re:From the article... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:From the article... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh... wait...
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what the hell is wrong with you? do you think that cars, mansions, designer clothes, and heroin pays for itself? what about rehab? what about agent fees? what about lawyers and accountants? these are all very expensive things that help starts live their expensive lives. who's going to pay for all of that stuff?
you think that because you go to work every day that everyone has to work
Re:From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I should totally get a cut of absolutely any profit derived from my work at any point in the future!
Otherwise I'd have to plan for retirement or continue building houses.
And that doesn't sound fair. Not while people are out there profitting off my work.
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Re:From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait, that's bollocks. Sorry. You do the work once, you get paid once -- iff you're lucky. That's how it works in The Real World.
Re:From the article... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Whatever happened to the good, old-fashioned concept of SAVING money while the going is good? Save a few $100,000, invest it, and let the money work for you. Why expect a free ride when you've blown all your money?
-b.
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Re:From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure the radio stations are making money. If they didn't play Supremes they'd play something else. I remember a buddy who had a show on the campus radio station and often he'd get requests for songs they can't play and he'd tell the callers "yeah, sure, I'll play it, keep listening." I've never felt the need to call a corp radio station but it's probably the same way.
The stuff they play is just a commodity. At least the smaller costs of running internet radio stations had the semblance of caring about actual music and content.
For the behemoth MAFIAA every win, every law, every take in their favor is never independant and always a stepping stone to even greater reaches. Next thing you'll know the public will need to pay a fee simply to remember how great a particular song goes.
If denying Mary Wilson name-brand bon-bons in favor of the off-brand ones keeps them from taking advantage of ANOTHER stepping stone towards the continued bilking of the public at large, I'm all for it.
Pipe Dream (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pipe Dream (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the dates on your sources (Score:4, Insightful)
For the record, BMI was not founded last fall. It's been around since 1939, which is an eternity in radio. ASCAP currently claims to have 275,000 members! In fact, being a member of ASCAP or BMI is virtually a requirement if you are a professional musician, as is being a member of a professional union.
But I'd like to also point out, having worked in radio, that ASCAP and BMI fees can be huge for small stations. The radio station I belonged to was owned by a university, and as a result, the university was able to negotiate a blanket contract for all peformances, radio stations, and jukeboxes operated on the campus (excluding the big performance venue, which was actually subcontracted to an outside vendor). We could have paid this fee ourselves, but it would have been a huge chunk of our operating costs.
This is greed, plain and simple. The reason why the RIAA wants a cut is because ASCAP and BMI (and SESAC, if you count Europe) fees do not go back to the labels, unless the label owns the copyright on the score (contrasted with owning the copyright on the recording). ASCAP and BMI fees are generally regarded as a good thing, because this is money that artists actually see. When a radio station plays a Nirvana cover of a Meat Puppets tune, the Meat Puppets get the dough. This is a good thing for small artists.
But there is a downside: ASCAP and BMI reporting is, at best, wildly inaccurate. "Charting" happens infrequently, and relies on stations actually taking the time to report this information correctly. Often it is not. I've heard rumors that SoundScan also has a service that scans the airwaves using a detection heuristic, but I can't find any information about that service, so maybe it was just speculation on the part of one of my coworkers.
Anyway, labels send radio stations boxes and boxes of free music. We're supposed to pay them now for playing their crap? I thought that's what all the coke and blowjobs were for
Re:Pipe Dream (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think radio stations already pay ASCAP and BMI (Score:2)
Strange. Someone who worked in radio once told me that radio stations kept records of what songs they played in order to pay royalties to ASCAP and BMI (a penny or two a song, I think). So I believe this is still the case. I always wondered if the RIAA would try to get a share, too.
Anyway, if radio stations can't avoid paying ASCAP and BMI then how successful would they be in fighting off the RIAA?
Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
1) RIAA offends the courts by trying to reverse Congress and fails, and loses some steam and (more) public credibility (with those who think they have any).
2) RIAA bribes the right people and that law gets reversed, which then costs our country its music-playing radio stations and the music industry loses the majority of its sales.
I'm failing to see a down side....
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
As somebody already pointed out the rest of the world gets by paying a fee for radio play. What this WILL mean is that you'll end up with the bland "selection" of national radio that other Western countries have. I was always surprised at how diverse the US music industry was but I didn't realise your radio stations got a free ride. Now it makes sense and I'm sure this would mean less exposure for niche artistes. Gotta love an industry that's trying to hammer nails in its own coffin.
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What this WILL mean is that you'll end up with the bland "selection" of national radio that other Western countries have. I was always surprised at how diverse the US music industry was but I didn't realise your radio stations got a free ride.
We already have a bland "selection" of mostly-national radio. The stations are nominally "local", but by some miraculous coincidence, they all play the same music and the DJs all sound the same. I pay $12.95 a month so I don't have to listen to our "diverse" FM radio.
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We already have that. Practically all rock, adult contemporary, etc. stations play the same thing...
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3) The RIAA pulls this one off. Member labels get fewer artists signing with them so they can participate in the new wave of music production, allowing them to garner air time on net radio stations. Additionally net radio stations outside the U.S. will continue to grow like some kind of pirate radio. The world (and especially the U.S.) will be exposed to artists that they never would have been exposed to via the current radio setup.
In this situation, the RIAA loses, corporate ra
Nice idea for a protest? (Score:5, Interesting)
One step ahead of you, I'm afraid. (Score:3, Informative)
I'd like to see all radio stations play only independent music for one day. See how the RIAA likes that.
Do you really think the MAFIAA and US government would tolerate such disrespect? They want to be able to charge against the will of the artist and publisher [slashdot.org] and may already have it. Something needs to change.
I don't think this would go over well..... (Score:3, Interesting)
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the judges will know what the hell radio is and realize and understand exactly what the RIAA is doing
Right. The radio is like a series of tubes with trucks running through them...not to be confused with that interweb thingy which is in your computer. Music can run through those tubes, too, but it's a different kind of tube with a different type of truck. Not like one is Ford and the other is Chevy kind of different. Really different. So you got your tubes and there's music running through the tubes
I always find it unnerving... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I always find it unnerving... (Score:5, Funny)
Sometimes it's just downright hilarious.
The Onion, February 2004 [theonion.com]:
CNN, September 2005 [cnn.com]:
This is going to backfire.... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is great news. There are only like 2 big radio conglomerates out there. They typically replay the same crap that the labels spoon feed them over and over again. Now, let's say they have to PAY to play that crap. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe play local stuff that doesn't cost a dime? Maybe it makes sense to play those albums that are not covered by the RIAA?
The best part is that if this is instituted it must be instituted across the board. They can't give radio stations breaks on a specific song over another. If they do, then this is payola. You can't pay radio stations to play your song. A discount on royalties is the same as paying them. Maybe we might hear some variety on the radio.
Again, another strategy not thought out to the logical conclusion.
Re:This is going to backfire.... (Score:5, Informative)
There are maybe a couple of hours each week when it possible to hear some decent music on the radio here but other than that you may as well forget it.
The operation was a success, but the patient died. (Score:5, Informative)
A long time ago my father (a construction worker) told me why you didn't see many houses made out of brick in California. Seems the bricklayer's union became way, way too successful and powerful, demanding more and more pay up to the point where people couldn't afford brick construction any more and moved to frame and plasterboard houses with tar shingle roofs (this was back in the early 50's). Basically they priced themselves out of the market, but they couldn't roll back their demands due to the nature of the organisation, and their leaders chose economic death over political death as an organisation because people are funny that way.
As Hawkeye once said, the operation was a success but the patient died.
Funny thing though, the frame houses seemed to flex a bit but the brick houses tended to rubble during earthquakes, lovely Aesopian message there.
Off-topic? No, just a very extended metaphor. The RIAA will eventually have absolute control over a commodity that absolutely nobody will buy. And when they start annoying Congressmen more than their lobbyists are worth by stepping outside the bounds of their anointed playing field, they're going to get slapped down hard. Nobody has a right to make money, the market has to be there, and RIAA is killing the goose.
Re:The operation was a success, but the patient di (Score:3, Informative)
Wood "gives" and flexes during minor earthquakes, often with little or no damage. If the house "breaks" wood is relatively light, you will likely walk away from the disaster. Brick cracks if the house is even slightly flexed and a brick wall falling on you is ill-advised.
I'm not even sure traditional masonry is allowable in new construction here.
Re:This is going to backfire.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It lasted about six weeks before the radio stations capitulated. Their listeners wanted music from the big names.
Sounds fair to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Mary Wilson, who with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard formed the original Supremes, said the exemption was unfair and forced older musicians to continue touring to pay their bills.
Yes, it's unfair that people are forced to work to pay their bills. There should be free money for all with no incentive to work. In a perfect world, congress should force everyone to pay record companies money, so record companies could distribute the wealth in whatever way they see fit.
Awww, diddums (Score:5, Insightful)
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Really? Wow. That's strange. I personally know at least 10 people who are all either part of various bands, work solo, or collaborate with several different bands and artists who write, perform and record music and, for the most part, don't make enough money from
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Congress (Score:2, Funny)
Double standard (Score:3, Insightful)
What the RIAA doesn't realize (Score:3, Interesting)
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You should mail them right away and let them know what a big mistake they're about to make. I'm sure they will be *very* pleased.
Silly RIAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats next? Suing stores that play music inside for shoppers?
Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, RIAA has bacome senceless long ago and its own worse enemy.
Like the old fable of the scorpion and the frog.
A scorpion asks a frog for help crossing a river. Intimidated by the scorpion's prominent stinger, the frog demurs.
``Don't be scared,'' the scorpion says. ``If something happens to you, I'll drown.'' Moved by this logic, the frog puts the scorpion on his back and wades into the river. Half way across, the scorpion stings the frog.
The dying frog croaks, ``How could you -- you know that you'll drown?''
``It's my nature,'' gasps the sinking scorpion.
Sting the radios, RIAA, and sink alone. They will start promoting indie labels.
I'm not sure what the big deal is. (Score:2)
All they're asking is that the artist and label get paid, too. Satellite radio and Internet radio have to pay the performance royalty. Why is broadcast getting the special treatment?
Because the public owns it. (Score:3, Informative)
Why is broadcast getting the special treatment?
Because broadcast spectrum was once a scarce, expensive and regulated resource owned by the public. The rules were made to insure that resource was well used and include the forced licensing terms you mention for the composer. The original goal of copyright law is to distribute culture and advance the state of the art and those rules can be interpreted that way. If the goal had been to support publishers and artists, they would be paid a stipend without fu
Here comes 24/7 wall 2 wall 'talk' radio (Score:2, Troll)
At the risk of being very unpopular... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that at the very least there is something to be said for this. If anything, the radio stations are racking up
income hand over fist from all of those insipid commercials we are forced to listen to, and it would only seem fair
that besides the songwriters and publishers (who are justly being compensated), the owners of the sound recordings
also get a piece of that income, which wouldn't affect talk radio, news and sports stations, but mostly for those stations
who have a 'music format', said music being the main reason they are able to remain in business.
This exemption business was something that was passed more than a half-century ago, originally allowed to support the massive investment
buildout in infrastructure which radio had to go through, long since recouped, and the fact that it still stands today shows the colossal power
of the lobby behind the stations/conglomerates such as Clear Channel.
This makes the RIAA's position that Internet broadcasters have to pay a bit more sensible, although totally irrelevant to the reality of the Internet.
Being that records are not selling that much anymore, and that people still listen to terrestrial radio quite a bit, it would make sense that some
of the income stream commercial radio is deriving from music should be used to give people an incentive to create more of the same material
the stations are using to earn income with.
I really don't see what's far-fetched or ludicrous about this; there should however be exemptions for not-for-profit, college radios, and low-power transmitters.
Z.
is this about money? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously. Are these people hungry? Are they homeless? Are they unable to pay their bills? Is their mansion really too small?
I ran into a former owner of a CD store in a college town a few years ago, and she said that she had to close down because CDs were not selling, so she sold the business, and started another one. She said explicitly that downloads hurt her bottom line, but oh well, times change, and she had to change with the times.
I mean, how many steam engine engineers are trying to sue these new fangled gasoline, oil, diesel, electric, fuel cell, etc engineers? Or their customers, or their kids, or dead people?
To me, this is some kind of psychological or socioligical problem that is not properly addressed as such, and the bottom line is that _everybody_ is losing because of it. The real problem is that the government is an accessory to their psychological/sociological problems, because I guess they have the same issues.
Why isn't the government or anybody concerned about real issues like national debt, health care (oxymoron) reform, energy costs, housing costs, and the stuff that actually affects real people that are real problems. I mean, if nobody bought a 1970s technology like a CD is ever again, would it really be a big deal?
Is this kind of sociopathy just "normal" when a society is collapsing on itself? Does anybody know what the real issues are here? This is a control/powertrip thing that makes no sense.
Wonderful! (Score:5, Interesting)
RIAA has to fight it out with Clear Channel, which definitely has the resources to fight them.
This will finally get public attention on copyright, royalties, and how aggressively the RIAA has been acting for the past several years. Most people don't know much about internet radio, but they know plenty about the noise box that keeps them entertained as they drive to and from work.
Then, if the RIAA are successful, they'll be making unsigned and non-RIAA artists who will happily sign royalty-free contracts, far more attractive to radio stations. More radio play, means more sales, which means real competition with RIAA.
I see a huge upside, and very little downside, for the public.
I agree with part of it.. (Score:2)
First off let me say I think it is reasonable for an artist (or a label) to want compensation for music played on the radio. BUT why does the RIAA fucking monopoly have to get in there all the time? Why should the RIAA / Congress decide how much airplay is worth to the artist or the radio station? Why not create a market where each artist / label could decide the price of each song? Then if you want publicity you could set the price at zero. If you think you are doing the radio station a favour letting them
Irony, +1 (-1 for the rest of us) (Score:3, Interesting)
RIAA Doublecharges to Fund their Political Control (Score:5, Informative)
Those "performance" royalties are collected by whichever agency represents an artist who wrote the songs: BMI, ASCAP are the biggest, the remaining <10% of artists are represented by a couple of "big little" agencies, and then a bunch of really little ones. But those agencies are at least as corrupt as the record labels which collect sales income, then find every excuse to count "expenses" before returning the minimum (if any) share of "profit" to the artists who made the record. Very little of the performance royalty is paid to the artists, and the return to them is pretty random.
This formula is also worked against the rounding effect of the sampling for determining royalty payments: either one "representative" hour a day, or one "representative" day a week is usually used, which of course means only the most popular artists have a chance of registering in a sample and getting paid. Since the most popular artists get played so much more (the same goddamn song, year after year, too), only the biggest artists get cut in. To make it even worse, the distribution of top artists in the "random" sample is used to divide the royalty collected from radio stations which pay a subscription fee as if they're playing every artist. So in effect those biggest artists are collecting the share of the littler artists who do get played, but who get rounded down. Those "rarities" and "from the vault's back wall" bands they're playing to keep you listening to the classic rock station so it sounds "fresh", with occasional "new" (30 year old) songs, all get lost in the rounding down of the sampling process. So their most valuable songs return the least share of the royalties to their artists.
And of course the BMI/ASCAP/etc collection agencies just underreport plays and percentages to the artists. I have friends in bands which registered half their artists with BMI, the other half with ASCAP, to see which paid better. For some bands BMI paid their half more, for other bands ASCAP paid their half more, sometimes 5-10x different, when they should all have paid the same. Then, since artists are flaky and move around & disappear on benders (or OD), the agencies often collect money they "don't know how to pay", so they just keep it. This also happens whenever there's the slightest possibility that a contract disagreement or unknown might allow different interpretations of how much should go in the check.
All of those scams are also fed back into the radio station's decicisions of how much to play (and promote) which songs. Since there's money attached, money gets spent on those deciders to influence which songs are played when. And to influence which "random" hour/day is picked to report who gets how much.
So now the RIAA wants to get in on the act. And of course they'll charge (mostly independent) streaming radio station even more than they charge (nearly all corporate) broadcast radio stations. Right when the Copyright Office has just rocketed already insane streaming royalties through the roof [savenetradio.org], threatening the entire noncommercial and small webcaster industry segments.
Broadcast radio already sucks worse than ever. Streaming was the only hope for people to escape the corporate noose in realtime and archived media delivery. Right as streaming was starting to get a hold in video, presenting an on-demand P2P (or communities small to large) world of all media, both kinds of royalties got jacked up to destroy the free publishers. Right as cameraphones also have the bandwidth (and caches) to play streaming radio, and even upload "news from the street", the media mainstream corporate got yet another life extension from the government, killing
Indirect Payola (Score:5, Insightful)
A major record label can create a list of songs they want played, and offer special royalty-free licenses to broadcast them as a promotion. Independent artists, bands that the RIAA's members just doesn't feel like promoting for whatever commercial reason, etc., won't have the beureucratic infrastructure to *offer* such an arrangement, even if they wished to do so.
And, of course, if they don't like particular *stations*, for whatever reason, they can refuse to cut deals with them.
It's the same story as with internet radio - it's all about control.
The key phrase here is 'mutually beneficial' (Score:3, Interesting)
More independent/ local Artists on the Radio (Score:3, Interesting)
Radio Stations will adapt, and only play the expensive stuff during peak times when it will get them the most listens for their advertisers. During most of the day, and the evening hours they'll be able to play the free stuff from independent artists. It might even mean that stations will have to hire an actual program director to seek out local artists that appeal to locals.
Like any change, some stations won't be able to adapt and will wither and die, but there will be a bunch of kids with a vision to take their place. Imagine a station that only played music licensed by a creative commons license that allowed unlimited radio play.
killing radio (Score:3)
The record companies... (Score:3, Insightful)
-b.
Playing two parties against each other (Score:4, Interesting)
"Hey, you Internet radio people! The normal radio people are paying $$. You should pay $$$$ because it's New and Different and it can be copied all over the place. And now we're getting a law passed for it."
"Okay, okay, here you go."
"Hey, normal radio people! Internet radio people are paying $$$$. You guys should be paying $$$$$$, I mean we can't even measure how many people you reach! And now we're getting a law passed for it."
"Okay, okay, here you go."
"Hey, Internet radio people! Normal radio people pay $$$$$$, why are you only paying $$$$?"
Top Ten "What's next"... (Score:5, Funny)
- 10. Marching bands
- 9. Wedding singers
- 8. Kindergarten classes (they see a veritable MINT in The Hokey Pokey alone!)
- 7. "Hold-Music"
- 6. "Elevator-Music"
- 5. Doorbells (esp. the kind like at the Clampett mansion on The Beverly Hillbillies)
- 4. Ambulance sirens (their lawyers are nostalgic about chasing them anyway...)
- 3. Organ grinders
- 2. Merry-go-rounds
And the #1 next target for their evil attentions:so why then do broadcasters have licenses? (Score:3, Informative)
kind of like you can take out a blanket license for your website, go see bmi.com for details.
what congress did in the copyright law in the 30s was write a law that, in one section, required the music folks to license their music for broadcast and other public purposes. not create a free ride.
Wait just a damned minute! (Score:4, Informative)
What's the difference, someone point it out to me, please!
They'll never get what they desire. (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhm... they'll never get what they desire. They desire "all of it" + 1.
In this world where "success" is measured by growth and accelleration, a culture of cannibalism. If you have read [or heard] "From Good to Great" you would understand that good is the enemy of great, not a step below. It's that mentality that really seems to be causing this chaotic and carnivorous meltdown in business and culture.
For me, in my mind, I think it's perfectly apparent that there are limits to one's ability to accellerate. There are limits to growth capacity. In both cases, when limits are exceeded, bad things happen. We live in a finite world with finite reasources. If "success" is measured by how something approaches something "infinite" I'd have to say there's a flaw in the logic.
They can all burn together for all I care. (Score:3, Interesting)
To paraphrase:
Hey, First they came for the music file sharers and you did nothing.
And then they went for Internet Radio Stations and still you did nothing.
And then they got the Satellite broadcasters and you didn't do anything then.
And now they're coming for you.
The radio stations can complain as much as they like, but in this situation, I can't be fucking bothered.
Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless we consider this a "freedom of expression" versus "corporate interests" battle for control of a major block of frequency ranges, we all lose because if the RIAA wins (i.e. the mammoth music production companies such as EMI, Sony, etc.) ), the little guys automatically lose, and we get more of the corporate fodder-crap music, etc. and NO outlets for true expression.
So Let's Not Listen To Commercial Music (Score:5, Insightful)
I loved Napster and Kazaa when they came along because they allowed me to sample a lot of music I wouldn't have heard otherwise. When I found something I liked, I'd go out and buy a CD. You know, to 'support the band'. Only it turns out the bands didn't get much (if any) of the money, anyway; it went to the record companies and stopped there. Didn't matter, because the RIAA shut the download sites down. No more music sampling for me.
Then the RIAA went on a rampage and started dragging grannies and gradeschoolers into court. That's when I stopped buying music. I just quit completely. I haven't bought a new CD in over four years.
I began listening to Internet-streamed radio and loved it. Then the RIAA began trying to shut that down. Now they're going after commercial radio.
Well, screw them. I'm done. No more commercial, big-record-company music for me. The RIAA can kiss my shiny metal ass.
In the process of listening to streaming music, I've discovered some great independent music. I don't need the craptactular garbage the record companies dish out anymore. Especially not if they're going to try to fine me or send me to jail if I don't listen to it on their terms.
Screw them. I hope they all starve, and their children, too.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:When does it end? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know where the law comes down on small mom and pop outfits that have the radio on in the background, but anyplace that has piped in music is paying.
A final note: if the stores are part of a chain, there is a good chance that all the stores get the same music, since the chain can use that in-house channel to play not just light-jazzed-pop-songs, but in-store specials and other internal marketing pieces.