Debanter

Dear Dad…University Taught Me A Few Things

March 17th, 2007 Rachel

I apologize in advance for this being very long. If ya need to, read a bit, walk around the room and ponder, drink some grape juice, then come back for a wee bit more. I won’t be going anywhere.

Instead of deconstructing this line of reasoning from my dear father in essay format, I’ll just go through and pick on the pieces that I shook my head at the most.

Here goes.

Meanwhile, the blogworld continues its collective breathing in a bag over the Internet radio providers surprise: Rate Increases. Whoa!

Nope. Not the Internet radio providers that are irking me. Live 365 is not the one who’s deciding the rates. The individual radio stations (which would be the ‘providers’, no?) who make up Live 365, and (as another example) the network of radio stations through iTunes, also aren’t determining the rates. Neither is Pandora, Finetune, potentially Last.fm, and the hundreds of other folks out there trying to imagine staying afloat under these new rates.

On the SoundExchange homepage, they point to The Copyright Royalty Board’s Royalty Rates for Non-Interactive Webcasting from 2006-2010. So now we’ve gone one step up from the guys who collect and distribute the royalty fees (SoundExchange) to the girls and boys actually making the decisions around here (CRB).

Which Wikipedia says is…

…a system of three Copyright Royalty Judges who determine rates and terms for copyright statutory licenses and make determinations on distribution of statutory license royalties collected by the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.

Do they provide music? No. Power radio? Nuh-uh. Decide what gets played? Nope.

Which brings me to my next point.

I was ignoring this stuff because I have this general belief that free markets always solve these issues..

The last thing in the world anybody should want is Congress getting involved.

Sorry - digital music is not a free market, sadly. This is a heavily regulated, yet very fuzzily legislated, emerging marketplace. The fact that this is a Congressional issue and people are lobbying is not surprising, nor is it new - we’ve seen this (well I haven’t, but I’ve read about it and heard about it in one of many great university classes - thanks Dr. Ellis!) before with the oft mentioned controversial origins of the VCR (”The Film Industry and MANKIND will melt into a puddle of goo!!).

With new technology comes new fears. And laws.

And potentially harmful consequences for the very same “free enterprise” my wickedly smart Dad (one half of the best parents that ever existed, which meant that I had a sweet ass set of analytical skills to hone in university) is so eagerly determined to protect. Onward we go…

As he has been a long time Live 365 listener, I’m not surprised this was the reference point.

But regardless of what I or live365.com does, that small guy isn’t any better or worse off because all these Internet radio stations are not giving these independent/working artists air time.

Ack. This is so patently untrue I don’t even know where to begin. Do I start with the handful of people who’ve mentioned that they swing by my blog to check out my handpicked Finetune selections…which has been up for a month, tops? Do I discuss the band I saw for the second time in two weeks this evening who was a radio find of a friend of mine? Do I talk about other friends who gag at mainstream radio and won’t listen to anything but British underground, teeny tiny online radio stations to hear what’s coming up next (while in Canada, mind you)? How about the dozens of band names I’ve scribbled down on pieces of scrap paper, envelopes, Starbucks cups, and almost a kitten tummy once (just kidding) to check them out later when I’m not doing whatever else I happen to be doing at that moment?

Yeah. Right. Internet radio is exactly like the stuff you get when you push “FM” in the car.

Cue laughtrack.

I appreciate my father’s taste in music for being wonderfully predictable and distinctively him, but just because you’ve listened to one Live 365 station doesn’t mean you’ve listened to them all or, gee, investigated the bazillion other sources of streaming radio waiting to be tapped within your Internet browser of choice…all of which are threatened here. There is a wealth of music alive and fighting online that is nowhere near the Billboard charts…and happily so. There is also an abundance of listeners grateful to see an alternative (that consists of thousands upon thousands of alternatives) on the scene. Soft Jazz FM is…shhhhh….not a very good case study, IMHO.

On to my next point…are you getting bored yet?

Jason Fry at the Wall Street Journal got it right with the headline: Music Industry wants higher rates but are the labels undermining themselves. Exactly right.

No argument here - just a question: did he read the actual article?

Net-radio fans are angry, but they shouldn’t be too hasty in blasting the Copyright Royalty Board. The real problem is a pair of misguided decisions made by Congress in the 1990s.

Tim Hanrahan and I wrote about this issue nearly five years ago, and it’s depressing to see how little has changed. A brief recap: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, building on 1995’s Digital Performance Rights in Sounds Recordings Act, said Net-radio firms had to pay performance royalties on songs played in addition to composer royalties on those songs. Terrestrial radio stations pay composer royalties, but they don’t pay performance royalties, under the long-established rationale that record labels benefit from the promotional value of songs played on the radio.

No argument there - The Copyright Royalty Board is not the only guilty party here, for sure. The DMCA hasn’t killed the digital music industry, but it sure as hell has made it more difficult/tricky/restricted. What Jason says later on is exactly why people are pissed about such backasswards hypocracy.

To me, that virtuous circle sure sounds like the old “radio is free promotion” bargain underlying traditional radio — for which performance royalties have never been paid in the U.S. Yes, there are technological differences between terrestrial radio and Net radio, notably the ability to guide what’s played, skip songs and keep track of what I like. But those differences seem to work to the advantage of artists and record labels: With Net radio, I’m more likely to hear songs I like, bookmark them and buy them. One listener’s experiences aren’t necessarily grounds for extrapolation, but this bargain seems like a pretty good deal for the recording industry, one it ought to be careful about altering.

Le sigh…Nuff said there.

I love my dear father, respect and admire and have learned a tremendous amount from him. But I strongly disagree that a ‘let it be/it’ll work itself out’ approach is going to be any better than getting up off our collective bums and at least trying to influence a different outcome.

Laissez faire indeed.

Posted in Issues, Learning, Music | 4 Comments »