 | SOUNDTRACKING Soundtracking is a weekly column featuring indie and alternative music, published every Tuesday by Laura Cushing on Gather.com. As an official Gather Music Correspondent, I'm pleased to bring my knowledge of indie and alternative music to the community. Soundtracking will feature some of the best up-and-coming bands in indie music today. Soundtracking will feature interviews, CD reviews, music playlists and mp3 downloads, and music discussions.
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This Week on Soundtracking - Support Free Streaming Music!
Hi everyone,
As many of you know, webcasters are soon facing high royalties on streamed music on the internet. (If you are unfamiliar with the issue check out Jason Keaveny's article, 'Internet Radio Day of Silence'.) These high royalties are going to put free online music sites out of business if this passes! We all need to do something to help. Let's keep the music going!
I'd love to hear what everybody has to say about this. I know that this is a very controversial issue right now but everybody's opinion counts. Though it's obvious how I feel, I would really appreciate to hear from both sides.
Here is an email I received from Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, this morning:
Hi, it's Tim one more time...
Disaster looms! Yesterday a federal court denied a plea to delay the massive increase in rates webcasters must pay the record labels. This means that, absent immediate Congressional action, the new ruinous royalty rates will be going into effect on Monday threatening the future of all internet radio.
This is a very dire situation and I'm writing to ask one more time for your support. The effort you've made over the past four months has been extraordinary and has forced the rapid introduction of the bill, but the committee process has been sluggish and we need to once again remind the representatives of the urgency of this issue. This is perhaps the most important phone call you can make for us.
Please call your Congressional representatives in the Senate and ask them to force immediate action on the Internet Radio Equality Act and bring the bill to a vote. It is critical that their phones begin ringing off the hook starting early in the morning. If it's busy, please try again later.
Congressperson Michael E. Capuano: (202)225-5111
Senator John F. Kerry: (202) 224-2742
Senator Edward M. Kennedy: (202) 224-4543
I'm sorry that we have to keep asking you for this - but it's our only recourse. We are no match for the legal and legislative strength of the RIAA and we need your help.
Thank you again.
Gratefully,
-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)
Let's do what we can to keep music free music alive! Music is meant for all of us to hear, not buy. Feel free to sound off below with your own standpoint.
Thanks, everyone!
CDs and promotional materials, interview and/or review requests can be sent to:
Soundtracking
PO Box 141 Newtonville, NJ 08346-0141
Email: Soundtracking@labarc.com / AIM: Lab Arc Designs
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| Laura Cushing, Music Correspondent - Soundtracking | ||||
Laura's column, 'Soundtracking' is published every Tuesday in Gather Essentials:Music. Soundtracking is your guide to indie and alternative music -- featuring musician interviews, CD reviews, MP3 mixes, and discussions. Laura Cushing is a 37 year old writer from the New Jersey Pines. In addition to music journalism, she writes fiction and poetry. Keep up with Laura's music series by joining her network, or subscribing to her content. | ||||
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Comments: 40
As you know, you and I disagree on this matter. People who create music deserve to be compensated for that. They have the right to be paid and respected for their work, and to determine how it will be shared.
That said, SoundExchange, the agency which collects internet royalties, has said it will delay enforcement of collection for small. broadcasters. John Simson, director of Sound Exchange, said in a statement
"We are pleased by this decision, which vividly demonstrates that the Copyright Royalty Judges got it right when they set royalty rates and terms for the use of music on Internet radio. This is a major victory for recording artists and record labels whose hard work and creativity provides the music around which the Internet radio business is built. Notwithstanding this victory, we continue to reach out to the Webcasting community to reach business solutions. We look forward to working with our partners, the Webcasters, to grow opportunities across the board for Internet radio operators and recording artists."
As for music being "meant for all of us to hear, not buy" I believe that this is a counterproductive opinion. Like any business if consumers stop buying manufacturers stop producing. There would be no incentive for the artists to continue making more/new music and they would stop. They may still play and write songs, but they would do it only for themselves and may not even record them. Or they may write new material, but they would only perform them for people at live concerts which would be all they would have left. If their music is simply given away, they would stop getting paid and would eventually have to find other jobs at which to earn their income. Everyone down the line from the musicians at the top to us fans at the bottom would suffer if the artists we love to listen to were forced to quit making their music because we selfishly stopped buying it.
For the sake of all musicians and fans everywhere, I urge everyone to pay for the music they listen to. Go out and buy the albums to show your support for the music you like. I know that I would not work for free so why would we suggest that musicians should?
I know a lot of musicians - and a lot of them love the exposure they get from streaming media, and don't see this as an issue of their rights being violated.
I don't know of a single musician, however, that has been 'forced out of work' by internet radio or any other form of online music downloading. If anything, it's been like a viral marketing tool. One person hears the song, they tell their friends "you've got to hear this band" and then so on down the line. Many people become fans, and therefore buy albums, merch, go to concerts, etc.
If music is GOOD, it has nothing to fear from being heard. People will support good music, always.
It seems as if the recording and music industry wishes to control what I hear. Many of the new artists that I hear on MySpace, streaming radio, etc. are not on the playlists of the radio stations in my market. Free radio is now controlled by major meida conglomerates who dictate according to sales, what's played. For alternative music lovers, these internet radio outlets, most run and supported by themselves or ad revenue, will be unable to bring us the music that we would probably never be exposed to or even buy.
It's amazing when you break it down how much an artist really receives after the label recoups marketing, production, administrative, and other fees charged and dedecuted from the artists before they even receive their check. Rogue industry people, from entertainment lawyers down to promoters, are stripping the artists of legitimate funds due them, due to ill-constructed deals and contracts made by naive or ill-represented artists, where's the calls to clean up that faction of the industry, so that the artists get more of what they legitimately created?
If I never hear what the musicians are playing, I am never going to buy CDs. Therefore, I am all for hearing the music for free on the Internet.
I feel that the basic problem inherent is the sheer intangibility of product. When you buy a CD, you have an actual product. When you buy a coffee mug, you have a product. When you buy a digital file, there are few real differences between that file and, say, a file you ripped off of a CD, or a file you copied from your friend's computer.
I also would like to point out that, really, this isn't an issue of 'royalty-free' music nearly as much as it is an issue of 'licensing-free' music. In effect, the question is really in determining the offset between how much a song played on a broadcast medium benefits the original producer (through free advertising) versus how much it detracts ('lost sales' - a sketchy marketing concept if ever there was one - or 'defamation of brand name', another sketchy marketing concept). In the end, it's hard not to feel like any result is an arbitrary number.
Frankly, I think that if we want to help artists receive their royalties, we should be able to come up with solutions that enable them to have the right to do what they want with their own music, including being able to license it to whoever they please.
I think in the end, though, nothing is actually going to change -- merely further stratification of the systems that already exist. Internet radio stations will either close down, go ultracommercial (cutting back on content and amping up their advertisements to meet with the licensing costs) or go pirate (unapologetically broadcasting illegally). And nobody will really 'win' from it.
For the rest of my ramblings on the subject, again, I direct you here.
Save Internet Radio
It's not about not compensating artists it's about making independent internet radio stations pay way more in royalty costs than regular or sattelite radio does.
Most of my friends are independent recording artists who would never get airplay from Clear Channel controlled or AOL type internet radio and their only airplay is through local internet radio stations run either by other musicians, College Radio stations or a few Public Radio stations. In other words this is just another way to silence the non- mainstream artists who don't have major label promotion behind their music!
My exposure on the net, gave me my first ten thousand listens on my eSnips folders. Now, I admit I'm not in music to expect to ever make a dime. Nor do I think I'm good enough to move on to any kind of fame and fortune.
But.... I agree that Internet Radio may be the avenue to stardom for many Indie and independent artists, from numerous sites. To force them to pay MORE than other venues, smacks of corruption by the existing terrestrail stations and recording companies. If anyone broadcasting music, has to pay a royalty, then it should be fair and balanced... completely equal.
I know a great many artists who SHOULD be out there making the mega bucks, but haven't been discovered properly by the "good ole boys clubs" that run the music media. If you aren't broadcasting originally from Nashville, for one instance, then you don't deserve to be heard? No way, baby.
Broadcasting already famous bands music... now, as stated above... seems to me another avenue to intro their music to people who couldn't otherwise afford to buy it just to hear it for the first time, would enhance their income in the long run.
I say keep free internet listening open. Period. Or... be 100% fair in the royalty taxation.
In such case you can opt for a delegation to the political concerns... to help postulate it better....
CHECK OUT AUSTIN POST. LET THE MONEY FLOW.
Some may recall that just a few years ago, attempts were made to control communication via music in the USA. The musician's words tell the story: (excerpt from McCutcheon's The List, written September 19, 2001):Listen to MP3 (right-click and Save Target As... to download) of The List (click here for complete lyrics).
We have purchased many CDs directly from the musicians at their concerts (we bought CDs of Hail to the Chief! and Stand Up! at one of John's concerts, where presumably fewer intermediaries each take a cut. Yes, this is more feasible for those who perform in small venues, but regardless of the artist and label, some paths of commerce pass through fewer hands than others. If you want to support your local indie music store, by all means, buy from them -- but that national retail chain will survive without selling you CDs.
You are free to support your chosen artists to he extent you see fit. Buy their songs or CDs, and when you can, attend their concerts and buy stuff directly from them. Kinda like public radio...
A similar concept in software distribution is shareware.
-- Christmas in the Trenches, a true story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 (during World War I). This story is known the world over, thanks in large part to John's song about it -- and a book by the same name based on the song.
-- Let's Pretend, a story from a much more recent war.
This is a great article. I hope that the powers that be will listen to us, because free Internet radio helps the artists. We then want to buy their music. Is there any updates on this? I am tired of them trying to charge everything on the Internet.
Dropping by with a 10 for you
Flippity Floppity, Zippity Zee
And a great big HI from Pooh and Me!
glitter-graphics.com
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