<== Site of the Week for 2010-02-22 ==>

musicFIRST

The recording industy and local radio are squared off in a dispute about broadcasting fees. The site musicFIRST argues the side of recording musicians and No Performance Tax and Free Radio Alliane argues the broadcaster's position.

Performers actually have a legitimate complaint. American copyright laws have the fees paid to the songwriter, and not the performer. This practice is absurd. The musician who rips a killer guitar solo might receive no compensation despite the fact that it was the guitar solo that made the recording. The YouTube video has musicians discussing the inequities of current practices.

This argument, that performers are short changed by copyright laws, really doesn't justify hitting radio stations with an additional fee.

Radio stations are correct in labeling this new fee a tax. It is a new charge being forced on the radio stations to redistribute income above and beyond the contracts they had with copyright holders.

The thing I dislike most about the program is that the money from the new performance fee gets channeled through one centralized exchange called SoundExchange which was granted monopoly status by the US copyright office and is controlled by the most powerful names in the music industry.

Some call this direct collusion between governmnt and big business "Fascism."

SoundExchange currently collect fees from Internet radio stations. Critics of SoundExchange claim the strong arm tactics of the group shut down the myriad of independent internet radio stations that experimented with streaming audio. SoundExchange brags of its close ties with SIRIUS XM and local cable channels (which are systematically monopolizing local broadcasts.

The Sound Exchange blog talks of the need to include more "metadata" in music files so that they can better track music usage and collect even more fees. This quasi state enterprise clearly sees the people as their enemy.

Although I agree that copyright law was unfair to performing artists, I find myself balking at Congress rewriting contracts and creating a centralized monopoly. They seem to be using one wrong to justify other wrongs.

I believe that the real lesson from this conflict between broadcasters and performing artists is that contracts written and controlled by government agencies tend to be inequitable. We would do far better if artists and broadcasters directly developed contracts, after all, broadcasters and performing artists have a mutually beneficial relation.

This skiff between broadcasters and musicFIRST is interesting from a political point of view. The politics seems to have our nation faced in the wrong direction.