According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of payola is "Undercover or indirect payment (as to a disc jockey) for a commercial favor (as for promoting a particular recording)."
There are two bills in congress, H.R. 848 and S.379, that, if passed into law, would levy fees against radio stations for playing music. Wait... WHAT??? Isn't that one of the things radio is supposed to do? Play music so that people will hear it and then go out and BUY it?
To listen to the record companies and the artists themselves, you would think that radio is stealing their product. Since the dawn of entertainment-based broadcasting, radio has been used as a means to help promote music and artists. You hear the song, like it, and purchase it. Payola was even used as a mans to get radio stations to play songs more often because, say it with me... MORE AIRPLAY MEANS MORE SALES!!!
Now that the record companies are having trouble staying financially in the black, they are looking for new streams of revenue. Hey... let's charge the people that are helping us a fee. Keep in mind, that radio stations ALEADY pay a licensing fee for the music.
Radio is already in enough trouble. The major groups are all starting to file for bankruptcy protection, literally thousands of employees are being laid off, and syndication is becoming more the rule than the exception. Let's face it... from a financial standpoint, it's cheaper to have Ryan Seacrest host 100 of your morning shows than to actually pay for 100 morning shows. I'm not saying radio is innocent in all of this. Consolidation has more or less killed the industry. But... that is a different issue. If these bills pass into legislation, even more people will lose their jobs, and the small radio operators will probably disappear altogether. You will see a good majority of stations switch to talk/news/sports formats. In a lot of cases, it will be cheaper to just shut the transmitters down and call it a day. College radio? forget it... it will completely cease to exist.
And of course, the artist themselves are up in arms over this. "How dare radio play my music without compensating me?" Ummm... let's go back to paragraph #1. Airplay translates into sales. It's promotion. You provide the content, radio turn that into sales. And NOT just sales of music. We're talking ticket sales for concerts and merchandise... both multi-billion dollar industries. Bono has been one of the most outspoken performers in support of the tax. And he's one of the richest people in the galaxy! Click Here to read what the NAB had to say in response to Bono. I certainly understand that Bono does a LOT of charity work. I appreciate that. But if it wasn't for media airplay from early MTV and radio, U2 wouldn't be around today and Bono would probably be a bartender in Dublin instead of owning half of the city! Why do you think artists like the Grateful Dead, Phish, and Dave Matthews ENCOURAGE people to record and trade their music? They know that they might lose some music sales, but they are gaining in merchandise and ticket sales. And The Dead have been around in one form or another for almost 50 years! Sounds like they know what they are doing!
The only music you would probably hear on the radio is that of the biggest artists in the world... the U2s, Rolling Stones, Britney Spears... If you were a new artist trying to get heard, it wouldn't happen. Whatever happened to the thrill of a new artist hearing their song on the radio for the first time?
Yes... the musicians have a right to be paid for their material. I'm not disputing that. But it is the responsibility of the record companies to pay that. NOT the people trying to help them sell more records. If more artists were to examine their contracts BEFORE they signed them, or learned to negotiate better deals, then this wouldn't be an issue.
And how would radio pay for these fees if passed? Well, other than laying off even more people, advertising. I think that most "casual" listeners of radio would agree that there are too many commercials as it is. I think that a good average would be 12 to 13 commercials per hour split into 3 commercial "stopsets." If these laws pass, I have no doubt whatsoever that 20 minutes of commercials per hour would become common.
The record companies know they screwed up big-time when they didn't jump on the digital bandwagon. And now they are trying to make up for lost time. Piracy is rampant and it's because the music industry DIDN'T see digital music as a viable platform. For the record (no pun intended), my iPod currently has well over 28,000 songs on it, and it fits in my pocket. How many CDs would I need? The music industry needs to learn to embrace new platforms, not just decide to stick with the old ways of doing business. If they did this back in 1997, there would have been more safeguards against music piracy in place BEFORE it became a major issue.
So... back to the original question. Is this tax a form of revere payola? I think the answer is "yes." even though payola is illegal, record companies embraced it for years as a way to get their artists more "PROMOTION" by getting records more spins on the air. Now they are asking, no... demanding that radio pay them for the right to promote their music.
I would encourage people to take a look at this website... www.noperformancetax.org to get more information.
Posts
"The music industry needs to learn to embrace new platforms, not just decide to stick with the old ways of doing business."
ReplyDeleteWhy doesn't anyone see this statement as something that could be said of radio stations too? Just because they've always played music without paying the artists for the performance doesn't mean it should always be that way.
Even though there is a lot of money at stake here, this really isn't a money issue. It's a copyright law issue. There's a loophole in the Copyright Act of 1909 that doesn't protect the rights of artists with respect to their recorded material being broadcast over the air for the radio station's financial gain because the broadcast industry didn't exist when that Act became law. That loophole needs to be closed, giving musicians the right to decide how they're music is used and compensating them for it's use over terrestrial radio air waves.
For additional information about what the Performance Rights Act really is, please check out http://www.musicFIRSTcoalition.org. Thanks!
Then the question would be why have the record companies spent years trying to get the radio stations to play their music. They have entire departments devoted just to this. Understand that I am a musician... and I believe that if I were to have my music played on the radio, it is promotion which would hopefully send people to either buy my music, concert tickets, or merchandise.
ReplyDelete