Today may be a landmark day for the rights of musicians. A Senate hearing will be held on legislation---The Performance Rights Act---to require fees be paid to performers by broadcast radio stations. In a way, the battle mirrors the ongoing fight between newspapers and other news-generating machines and bloggers, aggregators actually, who make use of their work without paying a cent. Are the bloggers promoting the newspapers or ripping them off? Nancy Sinatra has a column in today's NY Times on the topic arguing, of course, for the performers. Online radio "stations" already are required to pay the fees to performers, but somehow, not the broadcasters, who are lobbying against the proposed legislation furiously. According to a story in Variety, the NAACP argues for the bill as a means of compensating black artists who provide an audience to the stations. At the same time, minortiy-owned stations would suddenly have a big new bill to pay. Broadcasters say they give artists the biggest promotion they can hope for...wide exposure to big audiences, and they do it for free. There couldn't be a much worse time for radio stations to face a sudden big increase in the cost of doing business. The economy has cut deeply into advertising, and young people, well young people don't much listen to the radio. One thing's for sure: for a lot of lobbyists on all sides, today may be decision day. With rights in conflict, the U.S.Senate Judiciary Committee will be asked to sort it all out. By comparison the Senate hearings into Judge Sotomayor may seem positvely tame.
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Aug 4, 2009
A Question of Rights
Today may be a landmark day for the rights of musicians. A Senate hearing will be held on legislation---The Performance Rights Act---to require fees be paid to performers by broadcast radio stations. In a way, the battle mirrors the ongoing fight between newspapers and other news-generating machines and bloggers, aggregators actually, who make use of their work without paying a cent. Are the bloggers promoting the newspapers or ripping them off? Nancy Sinatra has a column in today's NY Times on the topic arguing, of course, for the performers. Online radio "stations" already are required to pay the fees to performers, but somehow, not the broadcasters, who are lobbying against the proposed legislation furiously. According to a story in Variety, the NAACP argues for the bill as a means of compensating black artists who provide an audience to the stations. At the same time, minortiy-owned stations would suddenly have a big new bill to pay. Broadcasters say they give artists the biggest promotion they can hope for...wide exposure to big audiences, and they do it for free. There couldn't be a much worse time for radio stations to face a sudden big increase in the cost of doing business. The economy has cut deeply into advertising, and young people, well young people don't much listen to the radio. One thing's for sure: for a lot of lobbyists on all sides, today may be decision day. With rights in conflict, the U.S.Senate Judiciary Committee will be asked to sort it all out. By comparison the Senate hearings into Judge Sotomayor may seem positvely tame.
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Okay... I GOTTA' weigh in on this one.
ReplyDeleteThere's MORE than one person that must be paid. The musician/artist, of course, must be paid, yet the broadcaster must be paid as well.
Having not read the bill, any effort to deny payment - by any means - to those whom are rightfully due monies, is equivalent to theft.
The artist, of course, deserves to be paid, as does the broadcaster.
Pink, Green, Black, White... skin color makes no difference.
Total monies collected should be disbursed by previously-agreed-upon formula.