NPR Fights the RIAA
I wrote this today for the LemonDrop blog and figured it fits here just as well and might interest my readers as well.
I worked 56 hours from last Sunday until Thursday. You can imagine how tired I was by the time Friday rolled around and I couldn’t exactly roll myself out of bed, but today I’m feeling a lot more refreshed and have time to add my bit to the ‘ol LemonDrop blog. Now, I’ve been checking back on the blog every day and have read Charlie’s posts with great interest, as he seems to have a great knack for finding those stories that truly support our mission to improve the music industry, and I’ve found my story to add to the mix today as well, but just know one thing as you continually check the blog. We’re not trying to be headhunters, anarchists, or anything along those lines trying to destroy the system and replace it with our own. We’re just concerned and passionate fans of music and the bands and people that work so hard to make it. Much like most of the common public is slowly standing up against the current administration’s laundry list of illegalities like wire-tapping, Cheney’s refusal to reveal information because he’s “not a full member of the executive branch”, and so much more, the common public that have supported musicians and their music all these years are slowly standing up against the unfair monopoly major labels have had not only over musicians and their rightful share of profits from their music, but also the unbalanced hierarchy of power major labels have been working so hard to maintain. I found this article by Kassai Krozser over at MediaLoper that talked about the current move by the RIAA to increase the usage fee internet radio stations would have to pay to play most songs. The article begins with a pitch perfect statement that the bigwigs of the music industry and the RIAA have continually been blind to, by choice or by pure ignorance:
“There is no greater enemy of the music business than the music industry itself. Never before in the history of mass entertainment have we witnessed an industry who worked harder to destroy itself.”
This new ruling has led to many of our greatest advocates of music that matters (non-assembly line commercial pop), most notably NPR, having to pay much more to do what they’ve always been doing: sharing great music. NPR frequently podcasts and shares mp3’s online, but they’ll be having money drives twice as often should this new ruling truly go into effect. We at LemonDrop won’t have to worry about this because it’ll be podcasts of our bands which we will have control of the copyrights to. But how is it fair, I ask, that smaller internet radio stations and online based music efforts such as NPR are being forced to pay more to broadcast and feature music online than radio stations do. I would much rather have a feature of one of our bands on NPR than our music being played on the radio any day. But the last thing I’d want is for NPR to have to pay more for our music than the radio, and that’s the big problem in the long run. Krozser ends his article as well as he begins it, and I feel it ends this post fittingly enough as well. Like I said before, all these posts about the wrongs of the music industry are not meant to be purely propaganda to support some cause of ours. Both Charlie and I, along with all the bands that are with us today and the many that will support us in the future, truly believe in the artist and the music they make. No good can come out of greed and I honestly believe I’ll be making enough money with the label to “simply get by and pay rent” as Charlie and I both laughed about, but I’m a hell of a lot more satisfied with that small chunk of change which I got from getting a band off their feet, than I ever would from making enough money for a lavish house and all the toys I wanted because I manipulated and took advantage of a band out of pure greed. There’s so much great music out there, just look at my blog, and eventually the bigwigs will have to realize this either by reacting voluntarily and supporting the “indie” music out there, or involuntary when the music industry as we know it finally dies. It’s up to them, but they better move fast because LemonDrop and so many others are fast on their heels.
“NPR is fighting. Others are fighting. You need to fight, too. Make sure your voice is heard. Don’t just sign a petition, contact your members of Congress.
Make no mistake about it: if this ruling stands, the big loser will be the entity that wanted it so badly. The music industry. As smaller, adventurous stations who operate legitimately fall off the map, consumer will turn to, well, pirate radio. They will not go backwards to commercial radio, they will not return to Tower Records — heck, they can’t. They will find the music they want. And the RIAA will spend exorbitant amounts of money chasing these pirates.
Is that really a business model?”
- NPR Starts a War (in case you missed the article link above)
Other links he provides:
EDIT: Randomly befriended a fellow blogger through my last.fm profile and he was ironically talking about the same issue, only he did a much better job of summing it up. Strange how things happen like that sometimes.
