Artists will apparently just continue to get screwed. You can add technology, you can change the terminology, you can interchange companies, you can even change continents…but artists will still get screwed.
As if recording contracts aren’t already unfair to the artist, labels are now trying to demand that radio stations pay them for the right to play their recordings. Currently, radio stations pay a performance license fee to BMI, SESAC, and/or ASCAP, which then goes to the publishers and songwriters, not the labels. What does this have to do with recording contracts being unfair? Let explain…no, there is too much, let me sum up.
Right now, the way things “supposedly” work is a radio station plays a label’s recordings for free in exchange for the promotional value the labels receives. If label’s new plan succeeds, that balance teeters heavily towards the labels (who would then be collecting massive amounts of money from the stations), but radio can fight back: payola. Payola can be summed up as “pay for play”. You pay the fee, the station plays your music. In today’s over-analyzed world, it would probably mean a whole range of prices based on time slot. I imagine the stations would use payola to balancing out the label’s fees or make more money from the labels than the labels are making from them. Which is just silliness – leave it alone and you have the same thing, minus the pointless exchange of money. That exchange may look good on paper for Wall Street, but it doesn’t add to the bottom line in the end, so it’s a dumb move. But maybe not…
The question for artists right now is – what does a record label have to offer me? Think about it – you can reach your audience directly through the internet. You have a free website through Myspace, you can sell recordings for nrealy free through iTunes, Amie Street (which I just signed up for today), Amazon, and a dozen other sites, you can book gigs through Sonicbids, you can hire PR, marketing, and radio promotion services for anything that can’t be done through the web. So why let most of your money go to some corporation, only for you to never make a dime from the deal anyway? This is where this new plan looks like the golden goose to the labels.
Using payola, the station would choose to play artists that already attract their audience, a.k.a. – well-established artists that people want to hear. They would also play artists who have the cash to pay to get played. Which means new artists, who have little audience attraction value and little money would get pushed out of radio altogether. Enter the record label.
“How else are you going to get your music heard? We’ve got deep pockets and will finance all that payola that you need in order to reach your audience with your new recording that we will also finance. Just sign here and we’ll take the majority of your profits for this “service”. (Enter evil sounding bwhahaha laugh here.)”
My sincere hope is that Congress and the FCC remember they exist for the public good, not the corporations and setup rules and regluations that prevent such things from happening. I doubt that will happen (history proves this constantly), but an artist can dream, can’t he?
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