Copyright Royalty Board (CR
Choking the Golden Goose
When’s the last time you read the story of the Golden Goose? Or if you’ve never heard the original, now’s your opportunity.
The Copyright Royalty Board is an arm of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), constituted by member performers. The CRB, through an associated company, SoundExchange, keeps track of webcasting and collects royalties to be distributed to performers and background singers (who do not receive royalties from traditional licensing companies such as BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC).
Without going into the details of the claims made by the several sides of this debate (and subsequent laws that come from it), suffice it to say that as of March 2, 2007 it appears as if MOST webcasts will disappear from the Internet.
What do we mean by ‘most’?
In all likelihood, the webcast(s) you love and listen to—the ones that provide the programming that neither commercial nor non-commercial terrestrial radio stations offer, nor do the special TV music channels, or satellite—will soon be history.
The CRB has come out with new royalty rates, retroactive to January 1, 2006, that will absolutely put most webcasters out of business overnight.
There’s a big question as to whether the large webcasters will be able to survive (e.g. one projection on the back royalties that AOL will owe for the past 14 months is $20,000,000) !!!
Once the CRB has killed webcasting, where will they get the golden eggs to divide between their performer and background singer members?
Where will those same artists find outlets to expose their new performances (one can be certain that it won’t happen on traditional radio stations or satellite—each is aimed toward mass audiences, not specialty audiences).
If you love Beach Music—cross your fingers.
We’ve always said at ESN that we would not go to a subscription service. Nor will we. Even if we did, it wouldn’t make any difference, i.e. you don’t want to hear how much each listener would have to pay for this or any other webcaster to simply be able to break even.
Even advertising sales would fall short. Early projections demonstrate that most webcasters would have to immediately increase their revenues from 150—300% simply to continue the streaming services they offer now, let alone make any kind of a living.
Economists who have testified before the CRB in the past year have been rather cavalier in their dismissal of small webcasters, saying that they are too small to be of any importance and should be ignored.
Isn’t it odd that this is exactly what the RIAA (parent of the CR purports to be protecting on behalf of performers? (Because the performers and background singers are ‘too small’ to be ‘significant’? That’s why they aren’t covered by the traditional licensing services).
Is this symptomatic of today’s mindset in the country and thus reflected in our government?
Do we believe that the little guy and gal don’t really matter economically?
If so, then why does the government annoy the little guy and gal for yearly taxes? Why do major record and media companies count the little guys in Nielsen ratings, Arbitron ratings, and CD and MP3 download sales?
Ignoring the little guy is popular when it serves the purposes of organizations that conjure control strategies in order to force their agendas onto a ‘free economy.’
Testifying economists make allusions that the economy doesn’t ‘need’ the small Webcasters in order for the webcast industry to grow. These are the people who did not invent the internet nor did they anticipate its form of radical democracy that has turned the world upside down (re: the many communist countries which go to enormous expense to prevent their people from tapping into the internet because it permits a free economy of thought as well as business growth).
Those who desire to control the growth that permeates the internet both misunderstand growth and how it is in the fiber of human action – not ancillary and subject to arbitrary agendas.
In the Beach Music World, the Endless Summer Network has always been on the side of the ‘small’ performers, writers, arrangers, composers, booking agents, nightclubs, managers, producers, and dozens of others related directly or indirectly to the Beach Music industry.
We play hundreds of songs by the aforementioned that are never played by traditional media outlets. The marquee of internet webcasting is an invaluable resource for performers of all genre of music.
Unfortunately, this Goose is so very tasty there are some who want to control Internet Goosedom to fill their tables and no one else’s. Certainly not those of us who comprise the Internet World—which is all of us.
Fessa' Hook 3-6-07
