Stop the music! Record industry lobby group actually lobbies

Mary Jane Irwin — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:40:51 EDT

Executives at SoundExchange, the much-hated collectors of digital-music royalties, have been caught doing something naughty . Much to the delight of Internet radio stations fighting higher online-music fees, a federal appeals court slapped their wrists for supporting special interest group MusicFirst Coalition. The supposed "coalition," actually an industry front, is lobbying to levy performance royalties on terrestrial radio stations — much like SoundExchange's own mission to collect billions of dollars from Internet radio.

The big beef is SoundExchange's nonprofit status prohibits it from spending money on anything besides the administering and settling of disputes from the collection, distribution and calculation of royalties. Supporting groups like MusicFirst doesn't make the cut — despite SoundExchange's claims to the contrary.

Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk, always a friend to the digital music industry, hectors SoundExchange about any appearance of a conflict of interest: "With more power would come greater status and bigger paychecks for its officers and directors. Even if the agency were only acting in the interests of artists and labels, it would appear to have a direct stake in the fight." How tiresome. He ought to be lecturing, instead, the Internet radio industry: Take a lesson from SoundExchange and, if you actually care about lowering your royalties, hire some ball-busting, rule-breaking, down-and-dirty lobbyists of your own. Sheesh.

"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated"

Tim Faulkner — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 19:10:39 EDT

Today, the Internet radio industry, imperiled by a new plan for music-webcasting fees, received a temporary "reprieve". An onerous schedule of royalty payments proposed by SoundExchange, the music industry's Web-licensing arm and okayed by a compliant Congress, is still in place. Basically, nothing has changed. And despite the stalling, nothing really will. Despite widespread claims of the imminent death of Internet radio, both music websites and record labels will soldier on. This is not a war of utter annihilation: It is Spy vs. Spy. Both sides will be around to throw new bombs in each other's direction tomorrow and forever, no matter how dastardly and deadly their assassination attempts are today. The music industry will eventually compromise at some rate that falls short of bankrupting webcasters, and Internet sites will, eventually, turn their attentions away from whining about the rates and toward finding ways to make money. No one ever really dies, but they sure make a lot of noise.

Gawker: valleywag, internet radio

Stop the music! Record industry lobby group actually lobbies

"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated"