RADIO UNDER FIRE TODAY IN WASHINGTON DC

Story by Inside Radio

Lawmakers and stakeholders from the music, tech and TV industries testified today on Capitol Hill on a wide range of complex but inter-related music royalty issues. With no witnesses invited from the radio industry, music business leaders had an easy path to lay out their case for why broadcast radio should pay a performance royalty.
The House Judiciary Committee will hold a second hearing June 25, when NAB Joint Board chair Charles Warfield will get a chance to present radio’s side of the story.

Much of the attack on broadcast radio during the first of two House Judiciary Committee hearings came from Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, who told Congress that FM/AM radio is leveraging its existing “unfair advantage” as stations move into the digital world. “The National Association of Broadcasters has spent a lot of money lobbying to maintain their free ride,” Portnow said, calling the resolution signed by 225 House members and 16 Senators opposing a radio royalty “nonsensical and nonbinding.”

His testimony offered little new in a decades-old debate, although Portnow did try to poke holes in the argument that recent deals between record labels and radio groups, including Clear Channel, Entercom and Beasley Broadcast Group, show market forces are at work. He argued that true negotiations cannot take place when one side of the transaction does not have a right to its property. “Any copyright reform simply must include a radio performance right,” Portnow said.

While much of the focus today was on webcast rates and royalty equity for songwriters, Digital Media Association executive director Lee Knife suggested that lawmakers translate web radio impressions into terrestrial radio terms. His prepared testimony pointed to Bette Midler’s recent Twitter complaint that four million plays on Pandora netted her just $144. Knife noted it represents the same number of impressions as just 20 spins on broadcast radio stations with an average of 200,000 simultaneous listeners. “This publicity ignores the fact that terrestrial FM broadcasters do not pay any royalties to creators,” he said.

Portnow thinks all of the pending music copyright issues should be resolved in a single bill that would take a “unified, holistic approach” to music licensing. “Its goal is actually simple,” he says. “Fair market pay, for all music creators, across all platforms.”