Arbitron, Inc. (ARB)
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- All Comments on ARB
- General Discussion on ARB
- Okumus Capital - Portfolio Holdings [view article]
- Inside the Radio Industry: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly [view article]
- The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
- Radio Industry Challenges and Opportunities [view article]
- Radio Companies: Untapped Value at Apocalyptically Low Levels [view article]
- Note to Radio Companies: It's About Innovating More, Not Sucking Less [view article]
loading ...Recent ARB Articles
- Okumus Capital - Portfolio Holdings
- Inside the Radio Industry: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- Radio Industry Challenges and Opportunities
- Okumus Capital - Portfolio Holdings
- The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness
- Radio Companies: Untapped Value at Apocalyptically Low Levels
- Note to Radio Companies: It's About Innovating More, Not Sucking Less
- Full List of Articles »
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Okumus Capital - Portfolio Holdings [view article]
Wow! No idea hedge funds were being so open about their positions. Must be desperate for capital. ReplyEditors
General Discussion on ARB
Is this a buy or a sell? ReplyInside the Radio Industry: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly [view article]
Methinks the ugliest fact about radio is the preponderance of homogeneous radio stations. There are far too many identical radio stations with no local content and no formatting beyond a jaunty first name ("Jack", "Alice", blah, blah, blah) and the wacky, nutty idea to sound like a musically inept cheapskate's iPod shuffle.Additional frequencies were licensed with lip service given to diversity and local content. Station ownership restrictions gave way to faceless corporate radio, and the bland, "safe for advertising" drivel that followed led to declining revenues.
Try a healthy dose of local, original programming for a few of your surplus frequencies. Sure, you'll have to convince the locals that they'll hear genuine radio after years of selling them swill, but differentiation will initially win market share. Continue to excel through differentiation, and your market may even grow.
Media is about more than cost control and centralized advertising departments. Media is about content, and terrestrial radio is all about local content. Reply
The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
If U.S. broadcasters want to continue their free ride based on the quaint notion that FM radio is still relevant, then there's room for compromise. Pay a performance royalty like the rest of the civilized world, or bring back 70s-style progressive radio. You know, where new artists get a chance, music is selected based more on quality than bogus research and "marketing incentives" and broadcasters are regulated to encourage both competition and public service.I didn't think so. The radio industry has been drinking the Kool-Aid for so long that they are hopelessly mired in a downward spiral that will only end when the FCC says they are wasting airspace and that the public will be better served with other applications in their frequency spectrum.
Here's an indicator: The best-selling iPod accessory is not a receiver -- it's a transmitter!
Dead Industry Walkin'.................. Reply
The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
Great points 158984. With respect to your comment about the history of this controversy, you are right not much has been openly debated about this in the recent years which is why it was immediately dimissed by the industry as nonsense. However, this issue has its roots as far back as 1930. There are a lot of resources online that go through the legal history of the matter, and if you want please email me and I can give you a great piece compiled by an FCC Counsel that goes through it case by case.Again, the crux of my comments were not so much aimed at who's right, who's wrong, but rather the missed opportunity of the radio industry to better its own hand by volutarily revisiting an ailing business partnership.
Thanks again for the feedback. Reply
The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
Good attempt at balancing views but there are quite a few holes in this article, relative to forcing radio to start paying a "performance fee."First, address your statement "This exemption of payment obligation for performance rights on radio has been routinely debated between the radio and recording industries for more than 70 years through numerous legal proceedings and Congressional actions..." After nearly thirty years in radio, I'm at a loss to come up with one time this issue was mentioned before a few years ago. I remember having record label promo people knocking down my door to get a record on air; in some cases leaving limos outside the station, with illegal substances in the backseat, so I could "go out for the night to unwind."
Before this mess began the record industry was paying millions of dollars annually in payolla to get their music played - sounds like record execs thought there was some value in having their music on the radio. Audience numbers have not degenerated enough to warrant a complete reversal in the business model. Could it be that the record industry has butchered itself over the past fifteen years and now needs another revenue source?
Here's another of your comments that needs to be addressed: "They [labels] further lobbied Sound Exchange, the independent, nonprofit performance rights organization that is designated by the U.S. Copyright Office to collect and distribute digital performance royalties, to push for an increase in royalty rates collected from the likes of internet and satellite radio companies who use their musical performances." Sound Exchange is about as "independent"... from the music industry as my brother is to me. SE was a radio industry creation that was forced to declare it an independent company in the early days of CRB. SE is still very much under the thumb of the record industry.
Next, you declare "After receiving some backlash from internet radio start-ups, Sound Exchange was forced to modify their positions somewhat to this end." Where did you get your information? Or, is the word "somewhat" code for "we'll rape you this year, then rape you with the same force again next year instead of raising the violence level." The only modification to these outrageous performance fees is in extending the exceedingly high payment through 2010, instead of raising them annually. An "oh, by the way" on this is that there are caps in this offer that keep internet radio stations well-below audience levels needed for creating a viable business. Exceed the cap and you pay the higher fee.
Sound Exchange is still in a battle with all except a few entities that have signed - each of these granted exceptions by SE because they effect so little of overall airplay - ie: college radio. Religious broadcasters and NPR are also very close to an agreement with SE. But talk to anyone outside of these circles and you'll find having Sound Exchange respond to any proposal to change the rate is akin to getting rid of leech that's clamped on to the middle of your back. (Disclaimer: I am very close to these negotiations.)
Performers should be paid. It's "who" should pay them that's the question. As the record industry started down its path of forcing low-quality songs on the public, not-so-cleverly hidden within the one or two good tracks on an album, performers had their own deal with each label. What's changed which now forces performers to ask for payment from the one industry that gives them exposure?
Yes, we now have the internet. But it's still a near impossible job to put out a song/album and have it discovered online. As for Satellite Radio, do the math - 15 million national subscribers split between 200+ channels and two companies doesn't get you a large amount of exposure (especially when many of these subscribers are still in cars parked on auto dealers lots). Downloading? It's still illegal if the public doesn't pay. But that's a record industry problem, not radio.
I've not been a friend to the radio industry since consolidation, and still feel it stumbles every time it takes its foot out of its mouth. But here are reasons why terrestrial radio should not have to pay a performance fee; 1) It already pays BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC. 2) Musicians and artists receive their session fees and whatever meager percentages the record industry lets them have. Performers know this is a rough business before getting in, and they sign their deal with labels (hopefully) after reading the contract.
The one question I'm still waiting to hear answered - if label logic is used - is "why should a new artist be paid the same amount of royalty/performance fee as an established act is paid? Then, you can ask, "What was it that drove the established artist to become "established"... I'm willing to bet it wasn't selling songs out of the trunk of their car.
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Radio Industry Challenges and Opportunities [view article]
Thanks for the emails I got this morning and all of the links to this over on the Yahoo message boards. Please keep the feedback coming. ReplyThe Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
Special thanks to the editors at Radio-Info.com for featuring it on their site as well. Great resource for anyone wanting a deeper look into the radio biz. ReplyRadio Companies: Untapped Value at Apocalyptically Low Levels [view article]
Thanks for all of the emails and other feedback I got on this article. Please keep them coming. ReplyNote to Radio Companies: It's About Innovating More, Not Sucking Less [view article]
Thanks to everyone who posted here and emailed me with your amazing feedback. ReplyThe Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
NTGH- Thanks for the feedback... you raise some interesting points. Please keep in touch. Replyat Hits
The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
An outstanding article. I will read it again a couple more times over the next few days. For now, however, I would like to challenge the statement: "A hit song clearly should garner a higher price than a secondary track on the same album, and in any other business those items would be seen as premium offerings commanding a higher price point."This is not clear to me, on two grounds:
First, one mans meat is another man's poison: listeners' tastes differ, and if somebody else finds value in a song that I deplore, who is to say which of us should be paying the premium?
And second, in the spirit of the proverb "promiscuity is its own reward," a hit song at the same price as a non-hit reaps the value of its own success simply by selling more copies, without the buyer being forced to pay a premium for it, or without the seller of the less-popular song being forced to denigrate its value.
It's unfortunate if "concept albums" get short-shrift in the new economy, but the days of albums loaded with second-rate songs coattailing on a hit are over, thanks to the pay-per-song model and uniform pricing. Steve is right.
DISCLOSURE: I myself have a home-made album on iTunes that isn't selling diddley-squat. If you check it out, you might say "rightly so" -- or you might not.
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The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
Best perspective on the issue I've ever read. Market forces can sort this whole mess out. Performance royalty should be 6% for all non-interactive delivery vehicles - satellite, Internet, terrestrial analog, terriestrial digital, whatever else comes along. At same time do away with payola laws. If promotional value of terrestrial radio to the recording industry is more than 6% of terrestrial advertising revenues, net gain to broadcasters. If over time listenership -and advertising - moves to Internet, then Internet will pay more royalty fees, but more promo dollars may move that direction as well. Market forces will pull this along and the most efficient distribution vehicles will prevail. Short of leveling the royalty playing field and letting market forces work, there will be no way to determine the relative effectiveness of each delivery mechanism. ReplyThe Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
CCU has every format conceivable, not just oldies but the new PPM ratings information does show that formats like oldies are actually very vibrant in certain areas. At the end of the day, you can't hold CCU up as an example for anything as its just a giant train wreck. ReplyThe Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness [view article]
Your suggestion would seem good except for one problem: for reasons unclear and unexplained, stations owned by the Clearchannel media monopolists are more or less boycotting new music in favor of "oldies" formats. Nobody can convince me that this is what the public is looking for: either there's an unseen economic penalty to playing new music, or Clearchannel is working from some agenda. In either event, it will take more than your suggestion to get them to start playing new music again on their stations... Reply