John Silliman Dodge
by John Silliman Dodge
Quid pro quo is a legal term from the Latin, this for that. The exchange of one thing of value for another thing of value, such as free radio airplay in exchange for free promotion of the music played. Quid pro quo has been the mutually beneficial arrangement between radio and records for decades. As any record promo man or woman, indie or label, will tell you, the boss is always pushing for more adds and more spins. Even amongst the majors there is no agreed-upon formula for how many spins stimulates how many sales (I checked), but the common knowledge is “more equals more.” It’s true, there are records which get airplay yet don’t sell, and there are retail successes that radio won’t touch, but in the main we all know just how the machine works. Quid pro quo.
So exactly what did everybody smoke to make them forget how effective this arrangement has been for all parties for the past fifty years?
Big Music, the RIAA, Sound Exchange, everyone has their undies in a bunch. They’re going after anybody with a Web stream, from the bigs to the smalls, wanting more, they say, because apparently the original deal with Radio was inequitable. (Right, see paragraph one above.) They say they want more for the artists. (That math doesn’t wash; the labels, not the artists, stand to be the money makers in this deal. Don’t take my word for it, ask the artists.) They say streams can be captured. (True, exactly the way that FM signals have been taped off the air for years.) Yet with scant evidence and no historical precedent, somehow this lobbying juggernaut convinced the Copyright Royalty Board that their case had merit. Maybe it was the weather. Ever been to DC in the summertime?
Maybe there’s some payback mentality involved here.
In the 1980’s when CDs were introduced, the record companies gleefully sold everyone their record collections all over again. They reissued everything of remote value and reaped a windfall. Only a few techs had access to the execs back then, and I guess few of them had the vision or the persistence to warn, “Excuse me, but we’re selling a digital master here.” Now the genie is way out of the bottle. Talk to any college-age kid about how he and his friends discover, buy and share music today.
But I keep returning to the value of exposure. During the mid-’90s I was the PD for the Seattle-based national children’s media network called KidStar, which blazed the trail for Radio Disney. I was talking to children’s audio book company head of marketing, and when I asked for product for air, she said, “Why would people pay for something they’ve already heard on the radio?” What followed was a long pause while I calculated just how much this person didn’t understand about 1) children, 2) her business, and 3) how radio airplay works. Repetition builds acceptance and demand long before familiarity breeds contempt.
Like most things legal, this issue is very complex. For a comprehensive review of commercial radio’s side of the argument, see www.kurthanson.com. For the public radio point of view, check out http://theclassicalstation.org/save_our_streams.shtml
For a quickee review, let’s turn to the source of all simplified knowledge, Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Royalty_Board) Here’s their formula for commercial webcasters, per play per listener:
“There is a minimum annual fee of $500 per channel or station, payable in advance. For example, under the 2007 rate, 100 unique listeners of a transmission of a sound recording will cost the transmitter eleven cents. The same 100 listeners previously cost a service a little over 7.5 cents from 1998 through 2005. If a service plays an average of 15 songs an hour, and a listener listens for 9.1 hours a week (the average amount according to recent Bridge reports), the listener would cost the service $0.66 a month. This same service will rise from 11 to 19 cents in 2010.”
A fraction of a cent per listener per song doesn’t sound like much money until you crunch a few numbers with
your own cume and playlist. What you calculate might make you reach over to your web stream and click the OFF button. Is this what Big Music wants? To paraphrase DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, “You really want to go to war with us??”
OK, we can shut down the streams. Wouldn’t kill us. Would only forestall the inevitable, which is the morphing together of web and radio into one combined delivery device. Bill Gates says, “Anything that can be digitized can be more economically delivered via IP (internet protocol/packets) than any other method.” But tower economics and webonomics are different, opposite in nature; costs with the first go down with more listeners while costs with the web go up. You knew that.
In the end, cynics wag, it ain’t about nothin’ but some cash. Considering that we just read in Forbes that by 2008, online advertising is poised to exceed radio advertising for the first time, you see where things are headed. And I’m all for paying to use someone else’s intellectual property if that’s how you draw a crowd. I just want the labels to remember the quid pro quo that has worked so long and so well. What about the monetary value of exposure? They already know how important the Internet is to their new music marketing strategy. Let’s not point gun at foot.
What can you do? If you’re not too cynical or too busy, you can contact your congressperson. Enough of that kind of grassroots political pressure actually works. But whatever you do or don’t do, watch this one carefully. It’s important.
John Silliman Dodge has a 25-year career that spans and integrates music, media, and management. He has been a Program Director for stations and networks from coast to coast. Today, John is a talent coach, consulting and conducting performance workshops on the art and science of creative radio communications. He is also the Program Director for All Classical 89.9 KBPS-FM in Portland. Contact John at 425-681-9935, by email at john@sillimandodge.com, or visit www.sillimandodge.com.
