Digital Music News - Re: My Song Was Played 3.1 Million Times on Pandora. My Check Was $39...

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Re: My Song Was Played 3.1 Million Times on Pandora. My Check Was $39...

And here we have the 2000 pound elephant in the room, it seems to me. RADIO doesn't pay artists for performances of their work, any more than streaming services do. Performance royalties are collected and (supposedly) paid out equitably by the P.R.O.s (ASCAP SESAC and BMI in the US). This inequity of payments is THEIR problem to solve for us. Here in Nashville the biggest edifices (by far), at the very top of Music Row, are ASCAP and BMI. Big Machine, Curb Records, even Sony's offices can't compare. SESAC also has an impressive (and growing) facility. The PROS COLLECT THE PERFORMANCE MONEY BEFORE ANYONE ELSE. And THEN distribute based on an opaque "survey" system. In the digital age, survey methods are obsolete. We have the technology now to detect EVERY TIME a particular song is played, virtually anywhere. But guess what, the PROs don't want to account for every song played. Because it ruins their "survey" model WHICH ALLOWS THEM THE ABILITY TO DECIDE WHO AND HOW MUCH TO PAY, without accountability. This artist royalty travesty has to be solved (through legislation probably) by the PROs. But THEY DON'T WANT TO GIVE UP THEIR OLD WAYS any more than the labels do. Pandora and Spotify and yes, coming soon Apple, can provide the PROs with a black and white picture of what was played and when. They can accurately account for and pay the digital royalties to performers (and include the players and producers!) through legislative mandate. But this "grey area" holdover from the old system, royalties that fall through the cracks due to lack of accountability, it appears that the PROs don't want to give up any more than the record labels wanted to account properly to their artists. The PROs need to get together, take their formidable war chest of unpaid royalties, and fight for the artists they represent. As long as they are in collusion with the other obfuscators in the business, artists will continue to be ripped off. Terrestrial radio, except in country music, is being more and more marginalized and yet music is being played, enjoyed and used for commercial purposes more than ever...increasingly every day. Let's account for and pay the creators based on factual, reportable information, already available.

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