Radio Is Killing Music
from the by-special-permission-of-the-copyright-owner dept
Someone going by the name of "quickbrownfox" sent over a link to a delightful rendition of the song "By Special Permission of the Copyright Owner," by Smith Ballew, which you can listen to below:Every time a radio is playingAnd from there it breaks into the same lyrics in the first version above. So we're a step closer to understanding the details of the phrase. And then... I found this fantastic Time Magazine article from August of 1932 that explains how the music industry was dying because of radio, and that our friends at ASCAP required radio stations to not just get permission to play any song on radio, but also to make the statement that was the title of that song, with "no facetious trifling":
they're saying...
"and next... you will hear us play
something with the publisher's okay."
Listening to this great announcer trilling
this thrilling...
new text!
Told me what to do
Try this very notion out on you...
The American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers is Tin Pan Alley's clearing house. Its 800 composer & publisher-members own the copyrights to nearly all the music composed in the U. S. since 1914. It is affiliated with similar societies abroad. To many radio listeners and broadcasters the phrase "by special permission of the copyright owners" has been irksome. A. S. C. A. & P. used to insist upon it, permitting no facetious trifling with the announcement. Lately, however, it lifted this requirement. Most of its songs may be performed without special permission, but a number are restricted, for example musical comedy songs which the producers do not wish to be too soon familiarized.That's ASCAP. Pissing people off for nearly a century. But what was a lot more entertaining about the article was the paragraph above this, in which it seemed to suggest that radio was absolutely killing music. Stop me if you've heard this before, but the refrain may be familiar:
Tin Pan Alley is sadly aware that Radio has virtually plugged up its oldtime outlets, sheet music and gramophone discs. The average music publisher used to get $175,000 a year from disc sales. He now gets about 10% of this. No longer does a song hit sell a million copies. The copious stream of music poured out by Radio puts a song quickly to death. The average song's life has dwindled from 18 months to 90 days; composers are forced to turn out a dozen songs a year instead of the oldtime two or three.Has there ever been a time, ever, in which the music industry's established players weren't complaining about the industry dying?
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Samuel Croxall
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Spoiled much?
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Radio is Killing Music
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It happens...
Yes. It happens quite often, although it is promptly followed by complaining about dying themselves.
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Wait, you mean the state of the industry and copyright at the time was making musicians turn out more music? It almost sounds like they were being "encouraged" to make more "useful arts!"
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Re: The answer to that ...
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The T-shirt
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Should we all still be burning whale oil for lighting and listening to our music on gramophones?
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And gramaphones? My word. If you really wanted to support an artist, you'd hire them as your court musician! Gramaphones! Hmph!
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If they'd replace that rickety steam engine with electric motors they'd find things would run a lot more smoothly, but they're too stingy to put out the money to change.
So it is with the record industry.
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better get out the whoopin stick and *force* those composers to write more music.
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I feel bad for people in the music business
Those poor song writers have to turn out a song per month. Oh the horror. How can any one person be expected to work that much? To sit down for a day per month and write a song?
As for the performers, they have even a worse job. They have to tour this great country of ours in a luxury bus, perform for a couple hours 1 or 2 nights per week. And for what? Millions of dollars per year? Hardly worth it in my book.
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Re: I feel bad for people ...
"Friday" is the poster-child for one-day-wonders:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0
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Re: Forcing artists/composers to make more music
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What is going on here? I'm going to crawl under my desk and hide for a bit just in case this really is the end.
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Like that, only for the last century or so.
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The problem isn't just radio. It's the whole shebang. Artists that create disposable pieces are what's promoted by the industry at large (that includes MTV, radio, iTunes, etc). When you create something disposable, you're not going to turn a huge profit off that.
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X Factor Generation?
Also, businesses like this do not like change. People will always listen to music, if the businesses are not moving with the times then it is the death of music, but only for them.
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Let's sing it!
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