Time to Bring Back Payola?
The BusinessWeek article "Radio Royalty Wars Heat Up Again" is good, but the reader comments are more interesting. Opinions are all over the place and many of them aren't based on any seeming logical explanation. One guy says to make Terrestrial Radio pay the additional royalties for streaming, but then goes on to berate Radio for adding more commercials per hour.
Um... exactly HOW do you think Radio is going to pay for those additional royalties??
If the RIAA wants to come back and double-dip on fees (I think a few of the commenters seem to think Radio is agetting a 'free ride' -- they're not.) Radio already pays royalty and licensing fees. These hearings have come about because the recording industry feels they should get additional fees if the station is streaming (the exact same broadcast!) over the internet.
I think one solution that these hearings need to consider is allowing Radio to charge the recording industry to play their music. I know in the past this has been outlawed by Payola rulings, but if the RIAA wants Radio to pay them for featuring their product, then Radio ought to have the same chance to profit from the recording industry. I think Payola laws were originally instituted to make sure the public had a fair chance to hear music from record labels that didn't have deep enough pockets to bribe a disc jockey to play their records. This was back when only a few radio stations were on the air and there were really no other ways to learn about new artists. With a plethora of other stations now on the air, the advent of internet radio, satellite radio, iTunes, indie music sites like GarageBand.com, and a myriad of ways to share music peer-to-peer -- the old reasons for outlawing Payola would seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur.
Grocery stores leverage shelf space and display location to receive better rates and discounts from their supliers -- why can't Radio be allowed to do the same?Labels: Fees, Industry, Rants, Record Labels, Streaming
Records vs. Radio DeathMatch
Just put these two prehistoric prats in a cage and let them duke it out, will ya?
Here are the latest whinings...
Headline #1:
Study says radio airplay actually drives down record sales.
University of Texas at Dallas Professor Stan Liebowitz says radio airplay can hurt music sales by as much as 20%. He finds the more time listeners spend tuned into the dial - the less likely they are to buy pre-recorded music. Liebowitz's study comes at a time when record labels have started pushing to nix radios' royalties' exemptions.
ZOMBIE RADIO SAYS: If the reporter had bothered to ask a Radio PD they would have said their RATINGS have been suffering because of the CRAP the Labels have been pushing to play on the air. They beg for additional spins but cry when the audience is so sick of their tune that they don't want to own it? DUH. ZR also feels that even if Radio didn't play their music -- no one would want to own it anyway. With the exception of 2 or 3 artists -- show me any talent being promoted by a major
label that the public can get excited about.
Headline #2:
Here's why the record industry is after radio's wallet.
Their sales drop yet again. According to Nielsen SoundScan album sales dropped 15% in the first half this year. In short - the record industry has definitely seen better days. The good news for labels is that the sale of digital tracks increased 49% compared to last year.
ZOMBIE RADIO SAYS: So, is this profit drop being blamed on Radio too? That's right -- it's Radio's fault you and your product sucks. Bitch about the 15% drop in album sales and completely ignore the fact your sale of downloads INCREASED 49%!!! Boo-Hoo-Hoo... I can't dig for coal anymore because all these gold nuggets are getting in my way.
BRRRAAAAAIIINNNSSSS!!!!!Labels: Fees, Radio, Rants, Record Labels, Trendwatch
Give 'til it Hurts
The battles over raised streaming fees begins as Chicago radio station 9FM bans free CD giveaways with the stated reason being "In the face of the RIAA’s struggles, it just doesn’t seem fair for us to be giving away CDs (for free) to music fans fully capable of paying for the music themselves."
The station began airing PSA style mentions encouraging listeners to voice their concerns over the latest ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board to raise streaming fees, and offered to 'buy back' any CDs the station had given away by trading it for a t-shirt.
You can read the entire press release here.Labels: Fees, Profits, Streaming
Will User Outcry Result in User Payout?
BusinessWeek offered up decent coverage of how the new web streaming fees will negatively impact the majority of internet broadcasters, but far more interesting were the reader comments.
Many express outrage at the new fees, but not one of them (to-date) said they would be willing to toss in their share of the new fees -- not even for the heavily supported (at least in word if not deed) indie-casters. In ZombieRadio's opinion it is the smaller web streamers who might very well stand the best chance of surviving this last salvo from the RIAA pickpockets.
The new licensing fees are based on individual plays of songs to individual listeners. While this could very well be a nightmare for large webcasters, (does ClearChannel pad its online listeners in order to reap more advertiser cost-per-point or do they bury actual counts in order to decrease their licensing fees?) the smaller webcasters are dealing with tens or maybe hundreds of listeners versus the thousands and thousands of "Big Media."
The indie users also tend to be the most passionate about their products, thus it may not be a hardship for the smaller webcaster to basically put out the proverbial tip jar and ask their listeners to support their online stations not just through word of mouth -- but through word of wallet as well.
Based on the newly released 2007 fees, each play of an individual song to an individual listener is charged at $0.0011 -- this means that if an online station played 16 songs per hour (which is what the Radio And Internet Newsletter is using in their own industry average calculations) it would cost a user $0.0176 to listen for an hour.
For ease of payment and collection, let's say listeners can only opt to purchase 24-hour blocks of consecutive listening time. This means a station listener could pay their own way for only $0.4224/day.
A webcaster charging their listeners $0.50/day would not only cover the new licensing fees, but make a $0.0776 profit -- and that's only if the entire 24-hour block is being used.
If a listener purchased 24-hours but only actually listened for 10 hours ($0.176 in licensing fees) the webcaster's profit would be $0.324 -- not bad considering there is only fractional mark-up in our proposed subscription structure.
A fifty-cent daily listener fee is less money than someone would feed into a jukebox (most jukeboxes start at $1 for only 2 or 3 songs) and the listener receives an average of 384 song performances.
NOW... will the fans of these threatened webcasters step-up and toss a few coins into the hat to keep them alive, online, and on the air -- or will there only be bitching, bashing, and gnashing of teeth?
Make no mistake
I am NOT a fan of the CRB or the RIAA, but neither am I a fan of those who complain about the situation and do nothing to help. This is an opportunity for the public to show their disdain for corporate radio clones and support programming they say they value -- for mere pennies each time they use the product.Labels: Fees, Profits, Webcasting
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Brraaaaainnssss...
Focusing
primarily on terrestrial radio broadcasting, ZombieRadio.com is
dedicated to pointing out the mindless and brain-dead actions of the
mainstream media industry in general.
Don't
get too comfortable satellite, television, cable, and internet -- we
all know from seeing zombie movies that the contagion spreads quickly.
"They're
coming to get you..."
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