Indulgence!

We as a whole, are indulgent of (or generally ignore ­ making us self indulgent) the lack of common sense, technology literate, policy making peoples that govern us.

This issue of Girlphora deals with Music, the right to listen and at what cost…

A soapbox piece by Frankie V

Even though the average person does not see file sharing/music sharing as a punishable offense, big business does. In fact, the RIAA means serious business. Last year, as you may remember, there was a lot of press about file (music) sharing.. you might even remember the name napster and vaguely recall grandmothers, young girls and even a person that did not own a computer being sued for “Illegal downloading” of music. This was the work of the RIAA.

According to Wikipedia “The Recording Industry Association of America (or RIAA) is a trade group that represents the recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of a large number of private corporate entities such as record labels and distributors, who create and distribute about 90% of recorded music sold in the US.”

Part of the RIAA’s mission statement says it is in business to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists.

Which is not wholly true, what really do is protect the record label’s profit. And they mean to take no survivors.

The following is as example of business policy employed by the RIAA: After learning that one alleged copyright infringer has died, the RIAA offered the deceased man's family a period of sixty days to grieve the man's death before they began to depose members of his family for the suit against his estate. You can Click here to read­ how RIAA goes about suing infringers. In an article entitled “The RIAA vs. John Doe, a layperson's guide to filesharing lawsuits”

Pretty awful stuff wouldn’t you say? Well the stakes have increased, not satisfied with harassing, bullying and threatening people into complying with the law the next logical step is to go after the people playing the music on line.

Enter Soundexchange.

Soundexchange, the royalty clearing house set up by the RIAA. RIAA members sit on a majority of the 18 seats of the SoundExchange board making their voice less than impartial.

And with excellent lobbyist, Soundexchange was able to be appointed by the library of congress to collect royalty fees for member and non members alike. Because of this appointment Soundexchange is accountable to no one. No checks no balances! Another IRS ­ like “agency” demanding, threatening, terrorizing, penalizing, suing and breaking those that cant fight back. The record companies should be so proud.

Okay so you are getting the picture, record companies “owned” RIAA, who uses mob like tactics to retrieve any monies owed (usually $750 per song “illegally” copied), now has in their back pocket a government sanctioned entity to help collect royalties from web and satellite radio stations. It does not matter if the musician or who ever owns the performance rights is a Soundexchange member or not, in fact it doesn’t seem to matter to Soundexchange if they even find those that own the recording rights. (Soundexchange has admitted that their ability to keep track of members only sees 7 out of 10 actually receiving the collected royalty fees due them)

Wait it gets worse:

As if the government, or in this case the copyright royalty board had decided to bury it’s head in the sand they also gave Soundexchange the right to set up the rates everyone pays for playing these recordings.

Hmm, sounds like fair trade went out the window and a government sanctioned monopoly was set up. Maybe Philip Morris should check out the Record company lobbyists.

So lets talk rates:

First we have different ways that people listen to music (excluding the purchase of cd, dvd, itunes, and records )

• Radiostations ­ traditional
• Satellite Radio Stations
• Internet radio stations

And each has a different fee that they pay.

• Traditional radio stations, an industry with $20 billion in annual revenue, is exempt and pays nothing to Soundexchange for playing songs. Soundexchange and the stations both agree that without traditional radio these artists would not be heard ­ so it is widely accepted that traditional radio helps in the promotion of the record label’s property. Yet just last year Internet radio listening increased dramatically, from 45 million listeners to 72 million listeners each month. It can be said that internet radio is benefiting thousands of artists who are finding new fans online everyday. Isn’t that considered promotion? Yet Traditional radio stations are the only player not paying a fee to Soundexchange. No Fee!

• Satellite Radio Stations, which have approximately $2 billion in annual revenue pays between 3 and 7% of revenue in sound recording performance royalties to Soundexchange.

• Internet Radio Stations - At the request of the RIAA (there they are again), the Copyright Royalty Board ignored the fact that Internet radio royalties were already double what satellite radio pays, and multiplied the royalties even further. So, on March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio's royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby jeopardized the industry’s future and the future of independent music.

Here is an example using some basic numbers

720	30 days in a month x 24 hours- in a day gets you 720 hours in a month
16	A normal station according to RAIN plays 16 songs an hour
11,520	number of songs played per month
500	hypothetical number of listeners
5,760,000	number of listeners for a months worth of songs
0.0011	cost per song played
$ 6,336.00	cost for the month for an internet radiostation (this is jsut to soundexchange and does not include the fees to BMI and others)
$ 76,032.00	cost for the year

Now most internet radio stations are small potatoes. They don’t have advertising. Or advertising pay for hosting and streaming services. Many do it for the love of it. They are 1 o 2 person operations and would absolutely love to make $6000 + per month. So these rates will put a lot of them out of business. It will also curtail playtime for independent unsigned bands.

So you might ask why not just podcast.?

Podcasters come under the soon-to-be-sued category, unless they play a song that is not copyrighted, (2)get a direct license from the owner of the recording, or (3) if they only use what is called an incidental performance _ from what I was told by Soundexchange that is about 15-20 seconds of a song. So no fees just fear to follow for podcasters.

Now as a way to look like they are making an effort to help internet radio, Soundexchange has agreed to “negotiate” with small webcasters and has offered them a deal. But the catch is you can only play Soundexchange member music. Thus insuring the food chain and keeping the record labels fat. This is a clear cut case of greed and intimidation.

It is my belief that this law needs to be re-define and key issues need to be addressed but that would require our government to be computer literate, because god forbid they ask some one with computer knowledge for an opinion.

Computer literacy aside wouldn’t it make some sense to let some other entity decide rates, possibly a board with internet radio stations, satellite stations and musicians also having seats.

And while we are talking common sense think about this: If traditional radio does NOT pay fees because they give air time and are considered instrumental in the promotion of new artists then neither should satellite, internet radio, podcasters and the like ­ I say do away with the double standard. Of course that would not be fair to the performers. But the idea is the same no preferential treatment, no grandfather clauses, what is good for one is good for another. If anything, then listeners and advertising revenue should be taken into play to determine rates.

While on this rant, may I suggest that Soundexchange be regulated, if they cannot bring keep track of memberships plus or minus 2% then they should be replaced with an entity that can keep up to date records. They should take a page out of the credit card companies playbook after all have you ever seen a credit card payment lose someone that owes them money?!

Also there should be a way for non members and unsigned performers to get their music into play without everyone being hurt, gobs of redtape or other not so nice things happening.

So I ask, and maybe you should too, Are we all the same if you put a bag over our heads and turn us upside down? If you believe in choice then check out save net radio for more information and make your voice heard.