Rebuffering: Misplaced Anger

The following comment recently appeared under The War on American Internet Radio Continues:

Simple solution for Radionomy: shut up and pay. From 2007 to 2013, I did a radio show for an Internet station. We paid the requested royalties because it was simply the right thing to do. As for the idea that these small webcasters provide independent labels with their only way of promoting their artists, that is flat-out false, especially in this day and age. I have never listened to Radionomy or any other service that rips off musicians, yet typically purchase 140-150 new releases each calendar year (very few of these are on major labels). The notion that artists should give away their recordings or play free gigs for "exposure" is moronic. The musicians I know aren't interested in becoming stars. They just want to be paid for their work. So pay 'em, for goodness sake.

Since the commenter (who posted anonymously) raises several points that I often encounter in online discussions, I think a systematic, fully-developed response serves the public interest.

Simple solution for Radionomy: shut up and pay.

This is the same "simple solution" that some float for health care, homelessness, university tuition, world hunger, and every other created crisis of our time. I don't know what Radionomy's books look like. (No-one seems to.) But the issue here – and across Net radio – is pricing start-up webcasting out of existence. Since no-one has argued that Radionomy, or anyone else, shouldn't pay a fair revenue share to content creators, the commenter's objection is off-topic.

From 2007 to 2013, I did a radio show for an Internet station. We paid the requested royalties because it was simply the right thing to do.

Again, no-one believes Net radio stations shouldn't be licensed. In fact, many small webcasters go into the field precisely to support artists they admire. Paying liability is part of their dream: helping musicians live off their art and produce more of it. The issue is the word requested. Copyright owners are not the only interests in play – this is also a cultural matter – and anyway, creators are far down the corporate food chain. You want an earful of abuse and exploitation? Bring up the very corporations bringing this suit to a roomful of artists. The implication that royalty rates have been inflated for their benefit is fatuous at best.

As for the idea that these small webcasters provide independent labels with their only way of promoting their artists, that is flat-out false, especially in this day and age.

In a recent Salon magazine article detailing the full-body header that Big Music has taken into monopolised senility, Eric Boehlert comes straight to the point:

Radio is an entity unique to the music industry. It’s an independent force that, much to the industry’s chagrin, represents the one tried-and-true way record companies know to sell their product. (Emphasis NRB.)

He goes on to explain how trust-friendly legislation stripped American broadcast radio of its ability to promote new artists. The most powerful alternative those artists have is the up-and-coming medium of small webcasting.

Webcasting hasn't yet had time to land its full punch, but it's far and away the most welcoming mass-media outlet for independent artists. Thousands of hobby and cottage-business stations already exist, and (outside the US) their numbers are growing. Niche formats, streamed to rabid, globally-distributed listenerships, are the medium's bread and butter.

If the law can be persuaded for once to promote individual enterprise over corporate laziness (see Capitalism gone awry: How legislation killed the music industry and radio), Net radio will revolutionise the market in favour of artists. Until now, they have always had to overcome tremendous odds to reach ears – and therefore wallets. This has caused many deserving talents, who should have enjoyed robust careers and enriched our lives, to languish in obscurity.

Finally, did Anonymous miss the part about Radionomy being a sister firm of the world's largest record company? Does he imagine that corporations habitually dump money on unpaying propositions? Obviously, the moguls at Vivendi think there's something to this "Internet" thing.

I have never listened to Radionomy or any other service that rips off musicians, yet typically purchase 140-150 new releases each calendar year (very few of these are on major labels).

It's hard to keep a straight face on this one. To begin with, there's no compelling evidence that Radionomy exploits artists more dramatically than Big Music itself. Most performers (some well-established; see Janis Ian's in-depth, well-informed essay on music marketing in the Internet Age) viscerally distrust the promoters and distributors they've worked with.

As for his own buying habits, I'll see Anonymous' bid and raise him this: 100% of my new music purchases come from Net radio. As in all. Some of those tracks are by artists established in their own countries but unknown in mine. The rest I bought from Bandcamp or the artist's website. If not for Net radio, I would never have heard them, and so I would never have bought them.

Anonymous doesn't reveal what drives his 150-odd annual music purchases; does he just buy willy-nilly, sound unheard? Is it the title that attracts him? The name of the group? Where does he even learn about these tracks, or groups, or whatever it is that gets his money, since radio apparently isn't in the equation?

And who are these "other services that rip artists off"? He seems to imply that all small webcasters fall into that category; possibly he believes broadcast radio pays a larger share of its revenue. If so, I'd like to give Marvin Glass, director of Streamlicensing.com, a moment with him.

The notion that artists should give away their recordings or play free gigs for "exposure" is moronic.

"Exposure" is another word no-one has read on Net Radio Blog. Not that the exposure con isn't real; as a freelance writer I bang my head against it daily. And we writers don't even make a dime beyond one-time purchase of our rights. By contrast, musicians get liability per listener per performance, amounting to a perpetual revenue stream worth much more than recording sales.

That said, exposure is a thing. Artists must be heard/seen/read to make money. If it's true that profiteers have spun that into a racket, it's also true that exposure is vital to us. That's why music promoters provide thousands of recordings to radio stations – including small independent Internet radio stations – free of charge.

But Anonymous is right that exposure alone isn't sufficient; you can't pay your rent with "exposure". And no-one in the Net radio community – least of all me – has suggested otherwise.

The musicians I know aren't interested in becoming stars. They just want to be paid for their work. So pay 'em, for goodness sake.

You know who else doesn't want to be a star? Small webcasters. They'd like to pay their expenses (or not; many are hobbyists, happy to operate at a loss, within reason). A few would like to make a living. The notion that Net radio producers are running off with bags of unearned money is frankly surrealistic. They are in fact the precise equivalent of independent musicians: doing what they do because they have to, because they've got the sickness, because they have vision and passion and something to contribute. Any attempt to cast them as exploiters – of anyone – is extremely specious.

Artists and small webcasters are two subsets of a common interest. To characterise their relationship as adversarial flies in the face of political reality and common sense.

Robin


(Photo of Neon Trees performing for a webcast courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)