A brief look at radio and what the Performance Rights Act could mean for musicians.
Radio Background
“Free” radio has been in existence since the late 19th century when Tesla discovered a way to transmit waves from a single source over huge geographic area. This technology, because of its indiscriminate and omnipresent nature, was necessarily free and available to anyone with a receiver to listen anytime, anywhere. In the 1920′s, radio programming began to take hold and stations started to broadcast live musical performances, which over time turned from live performances to the broadcast of recordings we have today.
Traditionally the operating expenses of broadcasting radio signals has been funded solely by advertising. Record companies that provided the actual recordings of the music played on the radio were compensated not from the radio stations themselves but from radio listeners purchasing copies of the recordings they heard free of charge on the radio. This plan works fine, in concept, but the problems begin to stack up when you start to consider who actually benefits from this model. Monetarily it’s a mess.
How Radio Works
Radio stations make billions of dollars from advertisers who choose to advertise on a station based on it’s popularity. A station becomes popular based in a large part on the music it plays and how many people listen in. Over the course of radio’s history, record companies have made billions of dollars from record sales which are a direct result of the exposure gained from play on the radio. A listener hears a song, likes it, buys the record. So far, so great. But who makes the music that record companies give to radio stations to play? The artists, the musicians, the performers.
In 1941, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) managed to get legislation passed ensuring compensation for artists by requiring radio stations to pay fees for the rights to broadcast a song. Artists are also compensated by record companies who make “deals” with artists giving them x amount of money for records sold.
So, the radio stations play the song and pays a fee to ASCAP who pays the artist; the consumer buys the record and the record company pays a portion to the artist. This is still a fine plan, but not every artists gets paid. Currently, by law, the artist or “composer” is defined as the person who writes the lyrics and main melody.
However, on generally every record or song there is more than one person contributing to the making of the song. For example, a songwriter (or composer) brings in a song and sings it while playing a guitar. Then someone else plays drums, someone plays keys, maybe someone sings back up vocals or plays something strange like a sitar. But these musicians/performers are not entitled by law to receive compensation from radio play. Radio stations pay the “composer” for the right to broadcast, but not all of the performers. Now, just to make things a little more confusing, it is important to note that both television and internet stations are a different matter and already pay composers and performers alike.
The Performance Rights Act
A bill was introduced in early 2009 called the Performance Rights Act, which would give every contributing musician on a song, not just the composer, the right to compensation directly from each radio play. The Music First Coalition is running a campaign asking for signers on a petition in support of the bill. The National Association of Broadcasters (or, “the radio”) is also running a campaign for an opposing bill called the Local Radio Freedom Act.
What About You?
The question is, who is right, which bill should you, the listener, support? Should radio stations be obligated to pay all performers for the songs they play? Why should television and internet stations pay performers and not radio? Should performers be happy with whatever rate they were payed for the initial performance and stop asking for residuals? I know what I think, but…what do you think?
More Information:
For more information about the Performance Rights Act or to sign the petition, visit musicfirstcoalition.org
For more information about the Local Radio Freedom Act, visit nab.org
it seems to me that anytime there is legislation the unintended side effects are always met with more legislation (with more side-effects). maybe the answer isn’t in adding legislation. maybe the answer is for artists and publishers to begin starting their own stations and running them the way they want to.
legislation just propagates more legislation. if the artists want something done right they should do it themselves. much like artists didn’t want to pay eccessive studio prices, they started recording themselves. if they want to make money by being played on the radio they should push for ASCAP to start a radio company.
I agree with you in part – I think it is important for artists to do things for themselves whenever possible. But pushing for an ASCAP radio station wouldn’t solve the real problem in this scenario. An ASCAP station would help, and perhaps over time the idea would lead to more stations with the same model – but the issue right now is why aren’t all artists being paid for play on radio? If artists hadn’t fought for their rights 60+ years ago, radio stations today wouldn’t be obligated to pay anything to any artist. So while I agree that an ASCAP station would be great, I think it’s still important to press for the rights of artists being played on any station.
and in addition to my earlier comment let me say that i do NOT like it when a full band isn’t credited as composer/songwriters on tunes on a band album. it doesn’t make sense and i’m against it despite my heroes (jagger/richards) doing it since forever.
i say if you’re in the band then you’re a composer.
on another note, margot is super lame without the likes of the great emily watkins. i am bummed that the band broke up. and i’ll never understand using another vocalist on animal/not animal when you have a voice like hers in the band. ridiculous. i’m looking forward to new music from the members no longer associated with margot.
This is simple logics: The business model musicians, recording companies and publishers are using is dead. Over. Kaput. The old way of paying anyone for a song or a movie you watch or share is as past as the buggy whip. The recording companies took this genie out of the bottle with digital music and now they want it all back as it was, where they got paid, the musicians got paid and everybody paid for every song. Truth is, that business model is as past it as the buggy whip and wagon wheel folks were when the car came out. It’s yesterday. That way of doing business will never (ever) come back despite lawsuits and threats. The truth is, we won’t be going back, so there needs to be a new business model where folks who write music and sing and play it all get paid fairly and not price gouge. Until the music industry understands this and stops pushing for more payments for something we all get free already, things will never move on. They need to come up with something new, different and innovative to fairly pay musicians, get the publishers out of the equation (their time is past) and realize that file sharing and computer radio are here to stay.