How A New Royalty Could Change Radio For The Better.

North Carolina Representative Mel Watt (D) has announced that he’s going to introduce new legislature before the next Congressional recess that will require broadcasters to pay performers a royalty on all the music that they play. Unbelievably, terrestrial broadcasters in the United States are not currently obligated to do so, thanks to the strong lobbying effort of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). Broadcasters in most parts of the world already pay these royalties, and US broadcasters on the Internet, satellite and cable do so as well.

Terrestrial radio is a different beast though. Right now radio pays only the songwriters, not the performers, for the songs they play. That means that the writers of a song like “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” (the most played song in the US in the 20th century) get paid for every one of it’s more than 8 million plays while the Righteous Brothers, the recording artists of the song, never made a penny from any of it.

Read more on Forbes.

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Has The Time Come For A New Collection Society?

Performance royalty collection societies like BMI and ASCAP have been around almost a hundred years (in the case of ASCAP), and while they've been essential to the well-being of the songwriter and publisher, some wonder whether they're a product of another time that hasn't quite kept up with our Music 3.0 age.

For one thing, in our new streaming world, some publishers and record labels feel they can do the job better than these companies, and have made their own deals with Internet broadcasters, something that would have been unthinkable even 5 years ago.

Now it seems that a new collection organization in Germany may show the way for other territories.

Currently GEMA is the equivalent of BMI or ASCAP in Germany, but the new Cultural Commons Collecting Society (also known as C3S) began in 2010 especially for musicians and songwriters that did not wish to be represented by GEMA. The company is now in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign to raise the necessary funds to go head to head with the big dog of the marketplace, and already has close to 500 supporters.

I'm not sure that C3S can make a dent in GEMA, given that it doesn't have the deep pockets required to be a player (at least at the moment), but it does exhibit an emotion that many are feeling; that it's time for something new and fresh.

We'll check back from time to time to see if C3S is gaining traction. If it does, you can bet that execs and songwriters in other parts of the world will be watching.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.