JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum What A Sham iHeart Radio Is

Okay...I'm convinced that iHeart Radio is a sham.
A friend told me that he was listening to "Kurt Fortmeyer Radio" via the iHeart app on his iPhone. I decided to check it out.

I put my name in there. They started out with one of my songs..."Hard Times (Call For Hard Liquor)"...and then they played music that bears little or no resemblance to mine, repeating other artists multiple times in a hour...but never playing another one of my songs. They only used my name to get people to listen, and then played songs that they will get royalties for playing. Everyone I know who has tried to listen to "Kurt Fortmeyer Radio" on iHeart has had the same experience.

Something else similar to this happened to me a couple of years ago. I submitted some songs online for airplay on a station (it was a Clear Channel station...and as it turns out, Clear Channel owns iHeart Radio) and then found out that they weren't putting my songs on the air, but instead they were putting them on their website for people to listen to. Every station in their network suddenly showed up in any Google search of my name...pages and pages of radio stations before anything else that had to do with me. Nobody was hearing my songs, but anybody who was looking for me ended up finding Clear Channel radio stations.
Another case of some corporate entity abusing independent artists in order to make a buck.
I'm refraining from adding expletives to this post.

That's like every music streaming service out there. They also do that for established musical artists. Plus nobody makes money on these music streaming services. Not even the artists. Your song can stream millions of times and you'll be lucky to make a few thousand dollars.

Aaron beat me to the punch. I'm on all of them, I-Heart, Pandora, Spotify ect. They all employ the same tactics, and their royalty rate is nothing short of pathetic.

People can complain or they can take action. Until people decide to take action instead of complaining, nothing's going to change. The same problems will persist over and over again.

I'm probably one of the few that is seeing money each month from streaming. It's not enough to retire on yet, but I am seeing money.

I have the iHeart app. I don't listen to it to often. But I have tried putting my name in it and it has played some of my music along with music that is mostly similar to mine.

The whole debate about streaming royalties is for another thread. But I will say this, artists are being a bit short sighted about streaming right now and missing the scaling the music economy. They're upset about the short term and they're not seeing the grand vision of how and where streaming is going to actually increase the revenue of the entire industry. If you really want to know more about the breakdown and backstory of streaming royalties - start the thread and I'll jump in with the facts of the breakdowns and where the royalties are.

That being written, Kurt, you've reminded me that I need to reach out to a former Clear Channel employee that I know about my new single.

That does make a bit of sense Jody. Nobody ever sees the bigger picture. The way our society is right now is if you don't get instant gratification or fame then you're a failure.

Kurt. I'm not on iHeart, but I had a song make it onto Clear Channel's data base and it had it's own page. Nothing came of it though because at the time I wasn't performing and there was nothing to drive them there. The station didn't claim that they'd put the song on the air. The song was kinda tied to a particular CC station that really wasn't in the area I lived or would perform. But in your case, if your song is tied to the local CC station, CC might take notice if you could organize a fan base to give your song(s) some plays.

Kurt, I can empathise. Small fry are a means to an end for the big guys.
You pay to get your song on Spotify so they gain there. Then if someone streams your song you get between 1 and 3 cents but they lambast the listener to ads for someone else.

Come the revolution brother ...
Vic

I'm not complaining about not getting royalties.
My main problem is the underhanded way they do business...bait and switch...lying for a profit.

BINGO!

The problem is that everybody in the world does this now.