1-20-14
The folks at musicFIRST were very pleased to read the article in the Wall Street Journal last week that focused on how radio was cutting down on the number of songs being played in order to save listeners. In a blog called, "The WSJ Exposes the NAB?s Big Lie: They Aren?t
Promoting Music, They Are Playing the Same Songs Over and Over," the group took aim at radio stating, "This saturation overplay obviously crowds out new bands, both because it just doesn?t leave much airspace to gamble on new acts, and because decisions are being made by too few people (often with too little imagination)." musicFIRST has been on a campaign to get radio to pay artists directly for the music. In this blog they say that there is no reason for consumers to purchase the music if they are going to hear it every time they get into their car.In the blog, musicFIRST goes on to say, "Big Radio?s closed-off playlists may be blocking out new artists, but at least its good for the handful of bands who win a Clear Channel Golden Ticket and go into 24/7 rotation, right? Bands like Capital Cities whose song ?Safe and Sound? has been on heavy rotation for two years? Not so much. First, if you hear ?Safe and Sound? every single time you get in your car, are you going to buy it, or just hang around and wait for it to come back around again?"
musicFIRST says bands are not earning anything from airplay on the radio. "These bands earned nothing ? zero ? from this airplay, no matter how many times the songs were aired. AM/FM radio has lobbied its way into a special exemption from these ?performance royalties? ? even though every other kind of radio (Internet, satellite, even cable TV radio channels) all pay for performance.
And finally, from the musicFIRST blog, "I am not here to tell radio how to run its business or whether it is good business or bad to overload playlists like this. But the music creators whose work is used must be paid for the work. And empty promises of phantom ?promotion? won?t do. If Big Radio wants to talk about promotion, the WSJ has put the question squarely on the table: Who?s Promoting Who?"
(1/20/2014 7:45:14 AM)
I find it amusing that rich musical artists are complaining that radio got wealthy playing their music over and over and over.
You want to blame the person who started this all? Don't blame Clear Channel...they were real late in the game.
Blame Todd Storz, who started his stations playing a total of 40 songs over and over and over and over...
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