[78-L] RadioRe: This Will Make Radio Even MORE Dead

[Michael Biel]

From: "Alan Bunting" <alanbuntinguk at yahoo.com>

> Here in the UK 
> royalties have always been paid to both artists and composers for music 
> broadcast and I remember being most surprised some years ago when I first 
> learned that this was not so in the USA.
>
> It hasn't stopped the BBC still owning 4 symphony orchestras and a concert 
> orchestra . . . BBC Radio 2 and Radio 3 and countless commercial stations
> still broadcast huge quantities of music

You have confused airing live or recorded-for-broadcast music, with
airing commercial phonograph records/CDs.  Of course any broadcaster
would pay the performers they contract to perform for their broadcasts
whether it is in the UK or the U.S.  The difference is whether to also
pay the performers on commercially sold recordings when those recordings
are broadcast without the performers having expending any extra effort. 
The fact that in the UK you DO have to pay performers when their
commercial records are played is the reason why the BBC still owns
orchestras!  If you've got to pay them, you might as well pay them for
performances that listeners cannot go out and buy in the stores.  


I do not know the current status of "Needle Time" regulations in the UK,
but these used to restrict the BBC and other UK broadcasters from airing
more than an hour or so of records per day, so they HAD to have their
own musicians because even their recordings did not count against needle
time.  The BBC made all of those Beatles recordings because they did not
count against needle time, but their Parlophone records would.  They
probably paid the Beatles a salary that might have been similar to what
they would have had to pay them in royalties if they played their
Parlophone records, so it was a win-win situation.  In the U.S. we have
never had needle time restrictions, although with a few exceptions the
networks did not air recordings of any type before 1949, so DJ shows
became popular in the 50s -- so popular some record companies bribed DJs
to play their records.  Let the performers get their royalties from the
record companies from the increased sales of their records after they
were made hits by radio play instead of double-dipping with royalties
from the radio stations also.  If the record companies are ripping off
their performers by not paying them properly, don't blame the radio
stations and try to make it up that way.  


Another thing to remember about UK radio is that one of the main reasons
the pirate and contentinal radio stations were formed was not only to
satiate the British teens' hunger for rock music, but because the needle
time on the Beeb and even emerging ILR stations were controlled by the
huge influence of EMI, Decca, and Pye, which did not allow much air time
for independent labels.  In much the same fashion, we see a similar
situation right now in the U.S. where there is so much concentration of
the recording industry into just 4 or 5 multinational giants, any
royality payments will largely benefit only these.  


> Although I strongly oppose the 70 year copyright extension which may be 
> about to happen in Europe, I do respect the right of performers to earn a 
> living from their performances during the existing copyright period.

Gee, I'd also love to continue to get new payments for things I did at
my job 30 or 40 years ago. That's why I paid into my pension with my
employer and now have a good income in my retirement.  The performers
should have made sure they had long term royalty agreements with their
record company with clauses that required the companies to keep their
records in the catalog.  That would have been their pension.  Right now
most performers' contracts have long since expired, and even if they
haven't the record companies could delete their records and POOF! there
would go their royalties on sales.  


> It is my understanding that playing records is "free" on American radio 
> stations is because it was originally seen by the record companies as a 
> good source of advertising so they allowed it to happen.  Alan Bunting


The 1909 U.S. copyright law has nothing which required paying ANY
royalties to performers.  This is even true for record sales!  Even
those royalties are also a matter of contract between the record company
and the performer.  So it was only natural to continue that practice
once radio developed.  It had nothing to do with using radio plays for
advertising.  As was mentioned, some record companies and performers
sued radio stations to keep them from playing their records.  Some
performers like Benny Goodman finally realized their records sold when
played on the air, and they even made live appearances on DJ shows like
Martin Block's Make Believe Ballroom in the late 30s.  They made sure
their contracts with the record companies paid them royalties, and
encouraged these DJs to play their records.  It wasn't until after the
war when record companies started to figure out that the only records
that really sold well were the ones that were played on the radio. 
That's when they started to give stations free records and then also
bribe them with payola.     

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com



Sad reality the oneth...we 78-ophiles are virtually the ONLY people who 
enjoy...or even can tolerate...the popular music of many decades past!! 
Radio airs what it THINKS listeners will enjoy; this by logic attracts 
listeners who then MIGHT hear the ads and thus have their buying habits 
altered...?! Radio makes its money by selling advertising...and they 
grudgingly allow some programming to fill in the space between the ads! 
BUT...said programming MUST attract listeners...and 78's DON'T...?!

Also, record makers (and artists) learned that hearing recordings over 
the radio induced music fans to BUY those selfsame recordings...and 
sometimes that in turn inspired those fans to go see those artists 
live whenever possible (which is how musicians make money!)

...stevenc (musician/net "broadcaster"/shellac accumulator/usw.)