The recording industry wants to impose a performance tax that would financially hurt local radio stations, stifle new artists and harm the listening public who rely on free local radio.
For more than 80 years, radio and the recording industry have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship: free play for free promotion. And it works. It’s a relationship that has sustained businesses on both sides.
In fact, radio’s free promotion of artists translates to as much as $2.4 billion annually in music sales for record labels and artists. And this doesn’t even include the enormous revenues they receive from concerts and merchandising.
But the labels–like many businesses–are struggling in this economy. They have failed to adapt to the digital age, and find their business model is broken. And now they want to impose a fee called a performance tax on local radio stations to subsidize their losses.
A performance tax would threaten the local radio stations that communities depend on. It would financially hamstring stations, stifle new artists and harm the listening public who rely on free local radio.
Read the complete article here: http://www.noperformancetax.org/Radio%20at%20Risk
#1. If you were an up and coming band or artist how would you feel about this fee?
#2. How else could the recording industry create revenue and still allow radio to play music for free?
1 comment:
Coming from the standpoint of someone trying to make way into the music business AND a musician, I believe it could be interpreted different ways, but it seems to be a bad move on their part. There's many other ways record labels could be generating revenue. They're just not thinking in terms of the digital age. The income generated by the tax may seem appealing, but I think it would ruin new music. So many radio stations would go out of business, and up and coming artists would be thrown out of the loop, which is not smart because that is where the business is now. Record labels need to realize that royalties, performance fees, etc.. is not where the money is anymore. It's in concerts, merch, and advertising.. One idea to generate money and still allow free radio play is to offer free music downloads BUT have advertisements running on the download site and charge a fee to the advertisers every time a song is downloaded.. As a side note, Record labels are just about dead anyways. Like the Long Tail says, this century is not about conglomerates, but about the individual. With today's recording technology, anyone can produce radio quality recordings. These are the people that will run the industry before too long. They should decide who and what gets on the radio.
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