Free Music!

I read Holland Cooke's article that was published today on Inside Radio. Holland shared the link through Face Book. You can read it here. This got me thinking, and ranting in my own mind! We've been hearing about the labels desire to tax radio stations for many years. After all, as Holland points out, that's what they do in other Countries. But will it really come to that here in the USA? Are the labels that hungry, to bite the hand that feeds them?

Well, we see what they are doing to Internet radio with royalty fees. It is really frustrating to see bands like Metallica on this band wagon too. After all, the ONLY reason for their rise in popularity in the late 80's and early 90's was due to "file sharing"; fans made copies of Metallica's music and shared it with their friends, and so on. That's how I was introduced to Metallica! (Sorry I won't link to them. They don't like to be shared.) But I digress.

The issue at hand is whether radio stations should pay the record labels for each song that is played. This is a model that seems to work in other Countries, so from the labels perspective why not here too? The problem with the label's theory is that we live in a different world now than we did 50, 25, 10 even 5 years ago! The proliferation of sharing information through the Internet is a different way of thinking and doing business. If you think about it, Radio is an anologous file sharing system. People get their news, weather and traffic information "shared" with them for free. And listeners get to hear "content" for free, whether it be music, talk, theater, etc. It has been with Radio's "file sharing" help that so many musical artists have been successful.  

The Internet makes it so easy now to gain an audience, and a following. If I were a musical artist, I would self publish. And I think there are enough good independent artists to keep music alive on the radio without the need for record labels. It is a matter of radio managers being smart and putting  more self publishing acts on their stations. With Social Networking, a station could easily find and add thousands of songs by independent artists to the play list and slowly weed off the dependence of the record labels.

It has to be said that Radio stations are just as guilty for allowing this dependence on record labels too. By eliminating music directors positions, and taking away the Program Directors ability to add music that the local audience wants, in lieu of some corporate mandated playlist! Some stations do have a Home Grown show. Why not put more of these local musicians in regular rotation? Radio has set itself up for this scenerio from the record labels. But threatening to switch to all Talk is not the answer. I think making an effort to find and play more independant artists is a more productive and more cost effective solution. Radio needs to understand that people now have a choice of what to listen to via the Internet, via iPods. But if you put your play list in their hands, and allow (enlist) them to find independent artists you will once again beat the odds.