Group pushing for better pay to artists from radio stations
Seeking royalties similar to those songwriters get
Every time you listen to the radio you’re partaking in the exploitation of musicians.
That's the basic message of the group musicFIRST, which is pushing the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, and one of whose members, the Recording Academy, brought a coterie of musicians to Capitol Hill last week. The United States is one of the few industrialized nations that does not compensate performers for performances played over the radio, and this coalition of musicians and record labels wants to change that.
Some very basic background on an overly complicated system is in order. Songwriters — the people who write the lyrics, compose the melodies, etc. — are compensated by AM and FM stations, but those who actually sing the words and play the instruments are not. These terrestrial radio stations have a special carve-out: Internet radio stations such as Pandora provide royalties for performers, as does satellite giant SiriusXM (albeit at a special, cheaper rate).
The compensation that Internet-based radio stations provide artists is determined by a panel of judges on the Copyright Royalty Board, which set a rate of 17 cents per 100 plays by those who listen on stations supported by advertising and 22 cents per 100 plays by those who pay a subscription at the end of last year. The Fair Play Fair Pay Act would require AM and FM stations, as well as SiriusXM, to pay the same fee that Internet radio stations pay — to level the playing field.
The National Association of Broadcasters is entirely opposed to this effort, as one might expect, going so far as to label the effort to impose a performance royalty on radio stations a “tax.” The NAB says that forcing radio stations to make such payments would lead to job cuts and endanger smaller, locally owned stations. Their argument is that the system has served every- one just swell for years: Songwriters get a little money, while record labels and performers receive free publicity in the form of radio airplay that translates into album sales. As Michael Scott might say: A classic win-winwin!
Of course, the economics of the music industry have shifted so radically that a cen- tral tenet of this deal — free airplay converting into album sales — no longer really applies. One small stat from Michael Nelson at Stereogum to give you an idea of just how precipitous the decline in album sales has been: In the last six weeks of 2015, Adele sold more albums than the next eight artists did.
Combined. For the whole year.
That’s great for Adele, but pretty terrible for everyone else. With the exception of vinyl, which is doing quite well even if it remains a tiny niche, the market for albums is down drastically. This goes for digital sales on platforms like iTunes as well as traditional, hard media like CDs. Streaming is the future. And, except for the very top tier of artists, streaming doesn’t pay the bills.
All of this is to say that in the new system, the old assurances from the NAB and its allies don’t make a ton of sense. The question we should be asking ourselves is whether they ever really made sense in the first place.