As long as radio stations have played records, they’ve been paying royalties to songwriters, through ASCAP and BMI, the music publishing collection agencies. Thanks to the storm stirred up by Internet song-trading, the artists and the recorded music industry want to be paid by on-air radio too. Radio, of course, is trying to fight it off–claiming, somewhat incredibly, that they’ll just go out of business if they have to add one more expense. And, emotionally, how can the music biz be so ungrateful for all the free exposure radio’s been giving artists and record companies all these years. Well, maybe. But radio has unilaterally strangled that romance by limiting the trickle of new music to the air since the Seventies. Most music buyers are motivated by TV show appearances and the Internet these days. Once again, by acting defensive and succumbing to its raging case of denial, radio skids backward into oblivion. You’ll hear more about this fight when Lyle Lovett speaks to Congress on the subject — see this in the Washington Post.
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- BROWSE / IN money music
- « KNDO-TV LISTENS, GETS AN EARFUL; A CAUTIONARY TALE.
- » RADIO RATINGS GO DIGITAL. UH OH.
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