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

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Biel" <mbiel at mbiel.com>
> 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.
>
The sad reality is that virtually ALL "recording artists" were SO overjoyed
by having actually "cut a record" (which they, of course, KNEW would
guarantee them fame, fortune and more groupies than they could handle!!),
they would sign just about ANYTHING...usually without understanding
any of the details! Generally, they signed away most of their royalties...?!
>
>> 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.
>
In fact, this is what the two "AFM bans" (1942-44 and 1948) were
about! The result is that AFM contracts guarantee recording royalties
(and DEFINE them!)

...stevenc