Readers,
Musea now has a blog.
It’s address is http://musea.wordpress.com
I am going to post both my weekly Musea E-mail Club messages and my weekly Musea Art Contests there. I encourage you to share this spot with anyone who might be interested in it. I hope to get a wider audience for my contests.
Also note that musea.us will remain the main website and it has all the best, past e-mail club messages, and art contests.
Now for this weeks message:
Clear Channel ( the largest radio conglomerate)
agreed to end its payola-like policy and play an agreed upon number of hours of indy music. Unfortunately they, being the meanies they consistently are, tried to squeeze a profit from the indies, while complying to the agreement. The following is from futureofmusic.org
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1. Indie artists and labels win major victory as Clear Channel
abandons effort to force artists to give up performance royalties
A little over a week ago, the Future of Music Coalition sent you an email announcing a new campaign to end a sneaky move by Clear Channel to not pay indie artists’ royalties. We are pleased to announce Clear Channel has capitulated – in just 10 days.
Here’s the background: As part of a settlement to end an FCC investigation into allegations of payola at some of their stations, Clear Channel and other broadcasters agreed to play 4,200 hours of local and indie music. Clear Channel set up a web page attached to each of its stations’ web sites that allowed local and indie artists to submit their music for consideration, but the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) found some troubling language in the license agreement: artists had to check a licensing agreement that said that the artist granted “Clear Channel the royalty-free non-exclusive right and license, in perpetuity […] to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, digitally perform the content submitted via their website.
Clear Channel was asking artists to waive their performance royalties as a consideration for airplay. In other words, Clear Channel had responded to allegations of payola with a pay-for-play scheme aimed at indie artists. It is critical that precedents are not established that require artists to relinquish royalties as a condition of airplay.
Last Monday, July 9, FMC launched a week’s worth of daily blog posts devoted to the topic, while A2IM continued direct negotiations on behalf of its independent label members with Clear Channel. Then, Congress got involved. On Thursday, July 12, Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wis., sent a letter to each of the major radio station groups, questioning their intent to honor the conditions of the payola consent decree. Feingold referenced the Clear Channel royalty issue in the letter, saying that the “required royalty waiver seems to violate the April commitment not to barter access to music programmers. I encourage you all, and Clear Channel in particular, to clarify this issue.”
As of Monday, July 16, Clear Channel had revised the language in the licensing agreement (see example here:
http://www.dc101.com/cc-common/artist_submission/). The new language removed the words “royalty-free” from the agreement, which ensures that artists can keep their rights to their public performance royalties. One of the nation’s smallest music non-profits beat back the nation’s most powerful broadcaster.
We want to thank the independent label group A2IM for all their hard work negotiating directly with Clear Channel on the revised language over the last two weeks. The victory is great for all musicians. It proves that we can take on the most powerful forces in the radio industry and win. It also shows a more equitable music business is possible if we band together to make a concerted effort.
Tom Hendricks
ed. of the 15 year old zine Musea
musea.us (main site)
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