The musicFIRST Coalition claims are unfounded...The FCC has no juristriction over content other than obscene material. Radio stations are free to play or not to play any artist they want, interview or not interview anyone they want and there's no requirement for stations to play ads unless they are political campaign ads, and the spots from the musicFIRST Coalition don't fall in that category. I worked at a radio station that boycotted any artist who performed in South Africa during the apartheid days, so boycotting artists is perfectly legal. Bono and other musicFIRST Coalition artists are realizing that radio is still a significant force in driving sales and concert promotion and that they need radio more than radio needs them. Stations around the country are switching formats to either music Bono, Dionne Warwick, Herbie Hanc*** and other musicFIRST Coalition artists don't play, or they are dumping music altogether in favor of talk, sports, news or religious programming. If performers want royalties, they should look to the record companies and writers who ARE receiving royalties from on air radio play.

Let me see if I got this right. Radio stations provide unparalleled exposure to these "artists" free of charge and they're complaining? Wow. They've been getting this free advertisement from radio stations for decades and they act like they're the ones being ripped off. Getting your song played on the radio is free advertisement. It's as simple as that. If anything, these "artists" are the ones who should be paying the radio stations money. Imagine if toothpaste, tampon, battery and razor manufacturer's started demanding royalties from TV stations for running their ads. Sounds pretty crazy.

On the other hand, I hope they allow dips***s like Will.i.am and Bono to charge royalties for their crappy songs. I would love to see their greed backfire when no radio station plays their music anymore. Maybe it will give more airtime for real artists who actually want to make good music and aren't in it just for the women, Bentleys and 35 room mansions.

Why is this so complicated? Let the market decide.

1. Allow Artists to opt in or out of the collection organization of their choice, or not at all.
2. Allow Radio stations to play whatever artists they want but must only pay royalties for playing artists that have opted in to a collection organization.
3. Allow Collection organizations to charge whatever they want, but can only collect for actual radio play for the artists they represent and must distribution the royalties fairly.

This allows everyone do decide what's best for them and doesn't force anyone down a particular path...

However,what I don't understand is why artists have let record labels and collection organizations to rip them off for years. Until they actually start doing something about that, why should we even care about their complaints about radio, youtube or whatever?

The radio diffusion of music was always considered to be the best way to increase sales. If radio companies need to pay it is not a loss for the radio station, because there is always an alternative for it, but for everybody else.

Perhaps the radio companies need to charge the artists to play their music. Not a good idea though. These artists deserve money for their music, but going after radio stations is dumb. Radio stations are not making money like they used to.

Also, as a U2 fan, this is to U2. Its not that the radio stations will not play your music, its the fact it has been sucking for a couple years now. Get over your egotistical selves and realize people want to hear decent music, not stuff that sound like it was mixed together in a garbage disposal.

I have one word for the RIAA ...... Isohunt.com

Only saps pay for music.

What are the most dangerous search terms on the Internet?

If you like to search for "music lyrics" or "free" things, you are engaging in risky cyber behavior. And "free music downloads" puts 20 percent of Web surfers in harm's way of malicious software, known as "malware."

A new research report by U.S.-based antivirus software company McAfee has identified the most dangerous Internet search words that place users on pages with a higher likelihood of cyber attacks.

The study examined 2,600 popular keywords on five major search engines -- Google, Yahoo, Live, AOL and Ask -- and analyzed 413,000 Web pages.

"Just in the past year, we've seen a pretty dramatic s*** in what we call malware," David DeWalt, president and CEO of McAfee, told Richard Quest for CNN International's "Quest Means Business."

Riskiest terms: word unscrambler, lyrics, myspace, free music downloads, phelps, game cheats, printable fill-in puzzles, free ringtones and solitaire.

http://edition.cnn.com/2...x.html?iref=mpstoryview

Well, I guess this will be the end of free commercial radio in this country. Better grab that wallet and prepare to pay for it, just like you do for over the air television. It's a shame in that since the RIAA put on their Gestapo costumes everyone is going to have to start paying through the nose for everything. It's amazing how greedy EVERYONE has become. It's killing everything and everyone. We're getting closer and closer to a fascist society every day, pitiful.

Possibly a taking a look at the history of this cultural phenomenon by looking back a few years might help to broaden the discussion of this subject.

Payola

Payola - The paying of cash or gifts in exchange for airplay.

"Payola" is a contraction of the words "pay" and"Victrola" (LP record player), and entered the English language via the record business. The first court case involving payola was in 1960. On May 9, Alan Freed was indicted for accepting $2,500 which he claimed was a token of gratitude and did not affect airplay. He paid a small fine and was released. His career faltered and in 1965 he drank himself to death.

Before Alan Freed's indictment, payola was not illegal, however, but commercial bribery was. After the trial, the anti-payola statute was passed under which payola became a misdemeanor, penalty by up to $10,000 in fines and one year in prison.

By the mid- fifties the independent record companies had broken the majors stranglehold on airplay and BMI licensed songs dominated the charts.

In the wake of the quiz show scandals ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) urged House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Oren Harris to look into the recording industry's practice of payola.

ASCAP, with its head in the sand, believed BMI licensed songs were hits only because of payola. With the breakdown in morals, ASCAP believed these records were played so often by greedy deejays causing them to become imprinted on unsuspecting teenagers. ASCAP who had always looked at rock and roll as a passing fad. With these hearings they were trying to ensure that would be the case.

Prior to the beginning of the hearings the FTC filed complaints against a number of record manufacturers and distributors. Those that wished to escape prosecution agreed to a 30 days Consent Order. Many of the companies found themselves back where they had started and folded.

http://www.history-of-rock.com/payola.htm

AND...

Payola, in the American music industry, is the illegal practice of payment or other inducement by record companies for the broadcast of recordings on music radio, in which the song is presented as being part of the normal day's broadcast. Under US law, 47 U.S.C. § 317, a radio station can play a specific song in exchange for money, but this must be disclosed on the air as being sponsored airtime, and that play of the song should not be counted as a "regular airplay." The term has come to refer to any secret payment made to cast a product in a positive light (such as obtaining positive reviews).

Some radio stations report spins of the newest and most popular songs to industry publications. The number of times the songs are played can influence the perceived popularity of a song.

The term Payola is a portmanteau of the two words "pay" and "Victrola" meaning to bribe to play on the radio. Victrola was a radio made in the early 1920s by the Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey, and became a word used for radios of all types with an enclosed listening horn or speaker in the radio box, just as Kleenex is used for all facial tissue paper in a box. Payola means a bribe to influence the programming content of a broadcast radio, television, or cable television program and is a federal misdemeanor.

A different form of payola has been used by the record industry through the loophole of being able to pay a third party or independent record promoters ("indies"; not to be confused with independent record labels), who will then go and "promote" those songs to radio stations. Offering the radio stations "promotion payments," the independents get the songs that their clients, record companies, want on the playlists of radio stations around the country.

This newer type of payola was an attempt to sidestep FCC regulations. Since the independent intermediaries were the ones actually paying the stations, it was thought that their inducements did not fall under the "payola" rules, so a radio station need not report them as paid promotions.

Former New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer prosecuted payola-related crimes in his jurisdiction. His office settled out of court with Sony BMG Music Entertainment in July 2005, Warner Music Group in November 2005 and Universal Music Group in May 2006. The three conglomerates agreed to pay $10 million, $5 million, and $12 million respectively to New York State non-profit organizations that will fund music education and appreciation programs. EMI remains under investigation.[1][2]

Concern about contemporary forms of payola prompted an investigation during which the FCC established firmly that the "loophole" was still a violation of the law. Four companies (CBS Radio, Citadel, Clear Channel, and Entercom) settled on paying $12.5 million in fines and accepting tougher restrictions than the legal requirements for three years, although no company admitted any wrongdoing.[3] Because of the increased legal scrutiny, some larger radio companies (including industry giant Clear Channel) now flatly refuse to have any contact with independent promoters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

So the question really is, who is paying whom ? If the artists are receiving "free advertising" from radio play, then perhaps they should pay. However if I, as the mamnager of a radio station, am selling advertisements around the playing of your VERY POPULAR song and making loads of money that way...then perhaps I should pay you ? No ?

"However if I, as the mamnager of a radio station, am selling advertisements around the playing of your VERY POPULAR song and making loads of money that way...then perhaps I should pay you ? No ?"

I look at it this way:

In it's current form, the artists get free air-play, getting their tracks out there and getting folks to want to buy them while the radio station, if they reach enough people, generate income through advertising. It's Win-Win. Both profit from the track while it is popular.

The artist is motivated to create more tracks as the current ones fade from popularity and the stations gets new tracks to "promote".

Changing this to tip the scales towards the artist, changes the entire game. The artist has less motivation to make new tracks and the station has less motivation to play them if they do. Nobody benefits in the long run and "variety" stations that play a mix of popular and "second run" music will no longer exist.

Bendall commented, "Even more offensive is the effort to silence artists through threats and retribution. No one should ever be penalized for working for what they think is right, for participating in the democratic process, for exercising their First Amendment right to correct a decades-old wrong. But that is just what these radio stations have done."

------------

Oh yeah, Bendall? Well guess who else has First Amendment rights...radio station program directors! These radio stations MADE YOU and now that you are raking in the dough you want even more. Guess what? I totally agree with NAB/radio stations' stance on this.

If the mainstream artists (who, again, were made mainstream by the radio stations in the crosshairs) want it their way, then I say these stations start airing royalty-free indie musicians! And if that happens I'll say it's about damn time!

And they want to talk democracy? Payola my friends, payola. Essentially "votes" are bought/bartered for by record companies to PDs to get airplay. If they want democracy lets put their music in a playlist that is 100,000+ tracks long. If/when that happens lets see how much money they rake in then!

Radio = advertising. I would not hear of nor would others who recommend music to me if it were not for mass media airplay. So f*ck the artists for complaining about free advertising.

These little punks whine about getting their music played while the struggling artist CAN'T get their music played because of payola. Gotta love it!

Seriously, i like the Black Eyed Peas, but come on, if you want royalties for radio play and then radio stations decide "well, **** you, we'll just not play your music" then you either live with the situation where nobody plays your music and you get paid nothing, or someone plays your music and you get paid nothing, but at least you get free advertisement.

I hope the radio stations do boycott these artists. The artists have no right to ask for royalties from radio stations since the artists get free advertising.

100% agreed.

If they are signed with any of these labels that are begging "royalties" for artists, don't play them.

Period.

It will take approximately 2 days for this to blow over if *every* station in the US does this right now.

Problem solved.

...of course, all the dead-air/commercials will be kind of annoying, but...the price you pay, I suppose. ;)

You have no right to ask for a paycheque from your employer since you get free advertising from the product they produce.

It's not as cut and dry as that.

Here's the issue at hand.....50 years down the line, these artists want their children and childrens children to be taken care of. What they want is pretty much what people in the movie business get. A consistent stream of income from their intellectual property.

Black Eyed Peas may be popular right now but let's for argument's sake say that 5 years later they break up. Basically, the issue at hand is that sure they get money and popularity now, but in 5 or 10 years the radio station will still play their music and they will get zilch for it. This is where I would like to see something happen for these artistes, as I do believe in being paid fairly for work.

The PROBLEM with this system however, is that it strangles the same artists it tries or claims? to protect. Since say, station X a huge station plays only pop, r&b, rock, dance...for example and they can afford this huge royalty, then there's station Z which is small, but still affected and can't afford the royalties so it has to shut down - this station plays new artists/indie etc. Noone has made it clear on whether station Xs' royalty payment covers artistes it DOES NOT play. But we can assume it doesn't....
And if that's the case they're actually working AGAINST up and coming artists. It's like practically forcing bands to try to sign with big records because literally, with all the small stations gone - tiny aspiring bands will never get played, as they aren't represented.

So it's a really dicey situation, and from speaking to people on BOTH sides, really it would just pretty much be better to leave things as they are OR work something else out. This won't make things better by any means, they'd only have you believe that. Will.I.am can complain and scream all he wants because guess what? BEP has a number 1 song. They're GETTING played. They don't have to worry about NOT getting played. They'll never be relegated to the tiny Indie stations.

The statement about wanting to take care of their chidren and so on into the future was true with film and TV actors until yesterday. The SAG voted yes on a contract that basically gives up their right to the use of their own image, less money paid for internet streaming of their shows or movies and less for internet creted content that they appear in. Any hope of maintaining more than their current bills and morgages have just evaporated with the acceptance of the worst contract in SAG history.

If the recording artists were in a union they'd be taking one up the backside about now just like every other union in Hollywood and New York.

"Black Eyed Peas may be popular right now but let's for argument's sake say that 5 years later they break up. Basically, the issue at hand is that sure they get money and popularity now, but in 5 or 10 years the radio station will still play their music and they will get zilch for it."

You're joking, right? You've gotta be...

They get paid *while* they work. Not after. Copyright was *never* intended to be a "welfare" like subsidy. It was intended to give them income *while* they produce their art. If they stop, so does their income...they can get jobs like the rest of us.

Prior to copyright, there was no income save from performances. How much of a "pretend" value do you really want to put on art? Why shouldn't everyone get to appreciate it after a certain time?

I agree with you PC_T but that is the spin they've put on it. Intellectual property is different in that way, and that's why I believe that other measures should probably be taken. But basically this is how the movie/film industry HAS been doing it, and this is also how almost all radio elsewhere does it. To me it's such a huge gray area, lol.

I try to compare it to different things...like software, which is also intellectual property. But with software, use is finite UNLESS the author updates frequently. Like, I don't have any programs currently installed on Windows 7 that worked back on Windows 98, unless it's gone through updates to work on Vista and 7 - and at least we know that those updates took some sort of current work, and we feel that sure, the price for the software is 'earned' by the maker.

For music and movies however, these people are paid hundreds of thousands to millions initially and this whole deal with 'continuing' to get paid after-the-fact, that is, when they're dead etc. seems really like a stretch....but at the same time, why not? If people and companies are benefiting from their 'work' way down the line, then why shouldn't some form of compensation trickle down to their legacy?

If the music of 2009 makes Radio Station T crazy money in 100 years (sort of like current oldies radio stations make money from the artistes of the 60s, etc.), isn't it fair that some form of payment trickle down to the chosen kin of the people who made said music/movies of 2009?...is basically the question I ask myself, and that's my personal quandary on this matter - the gray area I can't seem to think my way out of.

Should it be like material things? Where we get what we get when we make/perform a service and let that be that? People who are involved in the construction of a vehicle don't get a penny even though the vehicle may be on the road 50 years later. A construction company's workers don't receive any money though the apartment they've made has housed families for 200 years. But again, these are material things, and we can't really view them in the same light as such.

So, I guess the big question is, how do you measure intellectual property? And where are the limits to 'paying' for it?

I am in total agreement with tool here (damn you tool, my arch rival of ages past... you brought me out of retirement.... not to once again try and refute your bs, but this time to support you.... oh the horror... the HORROR!).

Look across the board and 99.9% of the jobs ppl hold, they get paid WHILE they work (unless of a paid leave of absence or paid disability - reciording artists cant claim either of these justly). SOME, a ever smaller minority, choose to put a portion of a person's pay into a retirement fund where after the person no longer is able to produce due to longterm employment and old age, they have a nestegg on which to live.

A wise employee makes investments to look after themselves in the later years as well as for their families after they are departed.

Now look at the other 0.1%, these people demand overpay for work done, pay on the work they did over and over again without producing more product to earn that pay, they want pay to continue to their estate after they are dead for their one time short term work project, they want to squander their money so that they have none and then whine about having no money.. I think it's time that this 0.1% abide by the same rules the rest of us working class do... stop looking for handouts.. can you imagine the fast food worker making 1 hamburger then demanding that every hamburger the customer has thereafter give them some sort of royalty since they 1st made the hamburger... ya... I can see it now... get a job at McDonald, make ONE burger then never make another burger or anythiong else, just sit at home and weait for those royalites to come in.

Heh...

Took ya long enough. :p

They're still broadcasting radio signals?

Wow, I had no idea.

Why?

"The Radio is Broken,
it don;t work any more"

Frank Zappa

We need us a music czar to heavily regulate all of this. It seems to be the magic answer to everything else now days.

That's odd; I'm pretty sure U2's latest album was "boycotted" because it stunk.

musicFIRST is not about "righting a wrong." That wrong was righted decades ago when radio was compelled to pay out royalties to composers and songwriters, who gain no significant publicity from airplay. Artists do. But then again, this is an RIAA-backed lobbying group; what sort of things would you expect them to say? And how reality-adherent would you expect them to be?

WHAT? U2 put out an album?? must have been pretty bad...

LOL. You play their music, you have to pay them. You don't play their music, they want to sue you. Who wins? It's a lose-lose situation for radio.

Now don't get me wrong. I do believe that artistes should be compensated for their work but imo this is a little like having their cake and eating pie and ice cream too (have your cake and eat it too is a rather silly phrase imo - why have cake if you're not going to eat it?). Being played on the radio gives artists exposure. It's free advertising to the nth' degree.

So I think something else should be worked out.

Update: I just went through the details and the information and it's not as horrible as skimming blogs and news would have you believe. Now I really don't know who's the villain here. I mean, they're asking for something like $1000 to $5000 for small stations and nothing from stations that play little music. I don't know the details of online/web radio, or about how much the bigger stations will have to pay. In the end, it doesn't seem that unfair.

What I DON'T understand however is this complaint of boycotting. If they have to pay this fee then they should have the choice of playing whoever they want to play.

good, I say stop playing all artists music that is demanding royalties be paid to them but radio stations giving FREE advertising to these artists by playing theior songs and letting the public hear what they have to offer

The radio stations are leeching off of the artists, and the artists should get paid. Besides it hurts Clear Channel and Cumulus, and the more we can do to hurt them the better. After the way Internet radio was hamstrung, this is the least that can be done.

Also, no I don't listen to the radio aside from NPR and the local college radio.

"The radio stations are leeching off of the artists, and the artists should get paid"
Utter rubbish. Radio stations get listeners through music, but they also, through choosing music to play, give free publicity to artists. Which is clearly what this is about. musicFIRST is not about music at all but about money.

The very fact they're complaining of a "boycott" shows that they need each other. It's symbiosis. Artists bring advertising revenues to commercial radio stations in the form of listeners and commercial radio stations bring record sales to artists in the form of listeners.