By John Simson
Those sounds you’ve been hearing from Washington lately are not music. They are the drumbeat of the National Association of Broadcasters’ (NAB) opposition to paying recording artists when their music is played on the radio. The NAB seeks to stir the passions of every radio owner in America – large or small, urban or rural – using scare tactics in place of facts. NAB misinforms where it should level with its members, and it treats recording artists with disrespect.
As a leader of a performance rights organization that represents all facets of the music producing community – from indie labels and artists to background musicians and big labels – I want everyone in radio to know we value radio. We value all platforms that use our music. And we consider radio our partners. But the partnership we have should be built on fairness.
It is simple, really. People should be paid fairly for the work they do. A very good friend of mine is Mary Wilson – a founding member of the Supremes. If she were paid fairly for her unique contributions the world of music, she would be able to retire. Unfortunately, like many others in the music industry, Mary continues to tour. It’s one thing to want to tour, it’s quite another to need to tour. Mary should be able to retire from the success of songs like “Stop in the Name of Love” which is played regularly on the radio.
The NAB says that radio is promotional. It may be, but other platforms – platforms that pay a fair performance right – are, too. The NAB says they are fighting for small radio stations. They are not. The music industry is strongly in support of special treatment for small radio stations. Small radio broadcasters provide diversity of music and the opportunity to hear specialty stations. The NAB says that restaurants and other retail establishments would have to pay a performance royalty. Not so.
Most over-the-air radio is owned by big conglomerates that centralize playlists. They build multi-billion dollar businesses around artists’ music. People who create that music should receive a fair portion of those revenues.
We want to be fair to smaller radio stations, too. For some this payment may be the difference between being profitable and having to struggle. This is why we are in favor of accommodations for smaller radio stations, college stations, talk radio and religious broadcasters. Small radio stations may not be able to pay like the big conglomerates, and we want to accommodate them. We hear them. We hope they hear us.
Listen to some of our voices: Grammy winner Sam Moore is still touring at 71. He tells a story about Mary Wells, known for the number one hit “My Guy,” coming to his house after she was diagnosed with cancer and telling him that she didn't know what would happen to her daughter after she died. In 1992, with no income earned from decades of radio airplay, Mary died without being able to provide for her daughter. Yet, I still hear “My Guy” on the radio week after week. Unfortunately stories like hers are typical for many legacy artists, session musicians and background singers.
By instituting a fair performance royalty on radio we can be fair to artists and to radio stations. This kind of change is hard. But every other civilized country in the world pays their artists when their music is played on the radio. Only the U.S., Iran, China, Rwanda and North Korea do not. Even in the U.S. platforms such as satellite, cable, and Internet radio, which compete with over-the-air radio, all pay a performance royalty.
My organization, SoundExchange, eleven other music community organizations and over 160 artists came together to create the musicFIRST (Fairness in Radio Starting Today) Coalition (www.musicfirstcoalition.org). We are working to secure a performance right that is long overdue, we believe it should be fair to all parties involved, including artists and broadcasters.
Sometimes Washington, D.C. rhetoric trumps the truth; the musicFIRST Coalition isn’t trying to put radio out of business like the NAB would have you believe. We want us all to march to the same drumbeat, one that won’t be easy to achieve, but that we hope is going to be fair.
John Simson is executive director of SoundExchange, an industry-backed organization that collects royalties for record labels and artists. The views expressed are his own.
