The recording industry is still locked in a battle with the radio business, saying that radio needs to
help them fatten their profit margins to pre-Napster levels pay royalties on the songs it plays, because music is the lifeblood of radio and this whole "free play" thing that's been in effect for years is just not fair. The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents the terrestrial-radio industry, claims that the reason it doesn't pay royalties for playing music involves radio's value as a "promotional tool," which stems from the idea that, perhaps, maybe people will actually be moved to acquire music after actually getting a chance to hear it and decide whether or not they like it. But musicians and record labels and songwriters are not having it. They want their money now! As musicFirst spokesman Martin Machowsky told
Wired's Threat Level: "[Broadcasting songs on radio is] a form of piracy, if you will, but not in the classic sense as we think of it... Today we gifted them a can of herring, about their argument that they provide promotional value. We think that's a red herring." (What is this,
Clue?) "Nobody listens to the radio for the commercials." Tell that to the guy who sings
the Foxwoods commercial, Martin!
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Idolator
Following a campaign that included mailing herring and a dictionary to their current nemeses in the terrestrial radio industry, a consortium of groups comprising record labels, songwriters, and musicians, had a small victory yesterday, when a House of Representatives subcommittee passed a bill that would require performance royalties being paid when songs are played anywhere on the AM/FM dial. A co-sponsor of the bill, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), didn't go so far as to say that radio spins are tantamount to piracy, but he did profess skepticism about the medium's promotional value, saying that there's merely "a correlation, not causation" between being on a top-40 station's playlist and music sales. But now that it's come out of committee, will the bill make it out of the House?
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Radio listening is down across the board, but there's a difference in just how much one socioeconomic group has been tuning out: "Over the last decade, college graduates ages 25-54, who make up an increasingly large portion of the population, have abandoned radio eight times faster than nongraduates. Today, they listen to 15 hours and 45 minutes of radio a week, while their peers without degrees listen to 21 hours and 15 minutes weekly." Why is that? One expert thinks that the spread is a result of the types of jobs college graduates have, and not the notion that they'd be fleeing to Internet or satellite radio—or that current formats are less to their liking: "In part, it's the nature of the work that people do," Mr. Rosin said. "Nongraduates are more likely to have jobs that allow them to listen to the radio. If you think of teachers, for example, that's a huge category of college-educated people in an environment where it's entirely impossible to listen to the radio." [
