JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Brian Austin Whitney Blog Monday, April 23rd, 2007

Hi Folks,

I've been getting more emails and articles forwarded to me about the doom of Internet Radio. I can't help but think there's legit problems and arguments to be made on all sides of this issue.

For example:

1. The Non Profit Broadcasters: They make the argument that they can't afford to pay the cost of the licenses. If they are a non profit/non commercial station, I think they should be exempted or have a reasonable blanket license for non commercial use. I suspect the big commercial broadcasters don't want that because it's competition for their broadcasts. I imagine most artists would be happy to give free license to people who are not making a penny off of the effort. I would.

2. The Huge Commercial Broadcasters: They say they can't make a profit if they have to pay for the music. I suggest they shouldn't have the right to use music unless they compensate the musicians AND the writers for that right. After all, artists can't tell broadcasters NOT to use their work for profit. We are forced by the government to allow them to play it as much or little as they want. If artists had the right to negotiate one at a time, it would be okay not to have a blanket license. But it has to be 1 or the other. Either a blanket fee allows you to play anything.. or you have to negotiate with each artist on each song to do so. Why is it that artists should be forced to help a commercial company make a profit without getting anything in return? And for those who say that "airplay" is its own reward, that's BS. Airplay is PART of the compensation for allowing blanket licenses. Not the ENTIRE compensation. What other worker is forced to turn over the fruits of their work to anyone who wants to make money from it? I know some artists would LOVE to refuse one or more of the big broadcasters from playing their music. Imagine how much money Madonna could make if she could exclusively license her songs to only certain radio broadcasters? See the problem here? She's forced to give up that right. She should get paid for her work as an artist, not just as a writer. In addition, the guy who plays that amazing guitar riff on Steely Dan's "Reeling in the Years" should get paid because let's face it, that guitar playing MAKES the song. So why shouldn't he get his tiny micro fractions of pennies which, over the years and number of plays, would add up to some actual compensation for his amazing work. That's only fair. What about the band members in Vertical Horizon who had the #1 song in the world with Everything She Wants, but didn't make much money at all from all that airplay because only 1 band member wrote the song. That should change. Big broadcasters can make money even at the higher rates. Sure, they don't WANT to share their profits, but since they are making that money off the work of musicians, they need to share it and pay for it.

3. The Speculative Internet Venture Capital Broadcasters: Live 365 is a bunch of venture capital money at work. Why do musicians owe them a huge IPO or corporate sale windfall? Seriously.. shouldn't they have thought this through before they invested in the idea? If Live 365 can't survive paying this royalty (and I do believe that they aren't making a lot of money) why is it the responsibility of the musician community to prop them up by giving away their work? After all, they don't want to work for free do they? They want gigantic financial returns on their investments. Perhaps they just have the wrong model? If so, then they'll lose what they risked and go on to the next highly speculative venture. That's what those types do. I really don't get why they expect musicians to be the only ones not making a dime? Again, I don't buy the argument that the "airplay" they get makes up for giving their music away for commercial use. It's PART of the compensation that musicians and songwriters get by participating in the government mandated blanket licenses. Without the benefit of "airplay" then why would anyone want a blanket license? See the obvious point here?

4. Sound Exchange. They work for the RIAA, though I think they no longer "officially" are part of the RIAA, it's clear they are still connected at the hip. We've been supportive of Sound Exchange here and we've taken their side in this issue, but they are making it hard to do so. Inappropriate comments from John Simpson, their leader, has pissed off a lot of people. And the fact that the rate is simply too high seems lost on them. They also should have made special options for small commercial broadcasters (a % of income at least) and a small blanket license or an exemption for non profits. But they didn't and so here we are. Now to their credit, this all came about (as I have been told by many people, though I could be wrong if they have it wrong) because the broadcasters wouldn't negotiate with them years ago for a fair rate. So they got in a pissing match in court and SoundExchange and the RIAA won. And they apparently threw the book at the broadcasters with these rates. Conventional wisdom suggests that this will now FORCE the major broadcasters to come to the table and negotiate lower rate deals. But that leaves the little guys hanging out to dry and that's not acceptable. If big broadcasters get a new lower deal, and no similar offer is made to everyone else, then SoundExchange is doing the wrong thing in my opinion and it will come back around to bite them on the butt via congressional action. They MUST give a reasonable and fair rate to the little guys. If they don't they've partnered with the major broadcasters to shut everyone else out and thus recreate the old school artificial controls over the market place like the RIAA labels have done with limited shelf space in record stores over the years. Perhaps this was the plan all along. If so, it's smart on their (The RIAA) part, but not something we can allow.

5. The RIAA: You can't blame the RIAA for trying to get what they can. After all, musicians have been screwed for a long time because US Radio doesn't pay performers royalties like they do in all other Western societies. So you can see why they'd want to get every penny they can now. BUT.. if they are negotiating deals with Sound Exchange to allow big broadcasters lower rates by playing their catalogs, and Sound Exchange doesn't extend that to all other broadcasters, then they are screwing everyone not on their labels. It's the same artificial control they've had over shelf space, only now it would be artificial control of on-line broadcasting to exclude all content not on the major labels and being played by only the big broadcasters. That's a scary thought. And it will cause a lot of uproar if that plays out. There needs to be 1 openly published set of rates based on size of broadcaster and commercial-non commercial status. If we don't have that, the system is being artificially manipulated to support one special interest group and that won't be acceptable.

6. The musicians. As usual, we're at the bottom of the food chain. We give the most to the process and have the least power and get the least compensation. As a community we can't allow 10 more generations of musicians to get screwed as our current and previous generations have been screwed by terrestrial radio. We NEED this license. We DESERVE this license. We can't allow good intentioned people who don't understand the real big picture to help the big broadcasters overturn it. We also can't allow the special interest at the major labels to screw us over from the other side. As usual, we're getting hosed by everyone. Both sides are our friends and enemies simultaneously. And that's why it's such a cluster F$CK!

7. The fans. They just want more diversity in their music choices. Little non profit and small commercial operators give them that. We had a guy here who has a channel mostly playing ukulele music for an average of 10 listeners at a time. What a cool thing to know someone is offering that. Why put him off the air? That's stupid. I am not sure that fans care if musicians get paid, but for us to have a thriving music world in this new era in technology, I think they'd like to get their free Internet radio and know those artists they love can afford to keep making music.

Again, this is all my opinion and thought process on this. Things are confusing and ever changing. If I got something wrong, please correct me. But if I am right, this is a big mess being made worse by a lot of opposing special interests. But in the end, the enemies may well work together to screw the little guy. Isn't that what always happens in our world?

That's just my opinion, I could be right!

Brian