Will The NAB Agree To A Performance Rights Tax In Exchange For Having RIAA Support Mandatory FM Radio In Mobile Phones?

from the rearranging-deck-chairs dept

We've discussed, for quite some time now, the ridiculousness of a performance rights tax on radio. This is the attempt, by the record labels, to get radio stations to pay performers for advertising and promoting their music. This is clearly not needed, because in the real world, without this, record labels already know that radio play is valuable: it's why they keep running payola scams. For them to try to then legally mandate that money should flow in the opposite direction is downright ridiculous. In what world does the government make someone pay to promote someone else?

After years and years fighting this, we should have known that the NAB would come up with some ridiculous idea in the end. The NAB, which represents broadcasters, is almost always on the wrong side of policy debates (that's what happens when your job is to protect a dying industry), but on this one issue we agreed... until now. Rumors are circulating that the NAB is willing to cave on performance rights, if the RIAA, in exchange, supports a totally wasteful plan to require FM radio receivers be placed in mobile phones, MP3 players and other digital devices. Now, everyone involved says no deal is done yet, but there are multiple indications that this is exactly where the conversation is heading.

The NAB tries to defend this by comparing FM radio -- a dying technology -- to federal mandates on digital television tuners. That, of course, was entirely different in so many ways. It involved attempts to move the country forward to a new technology, not mandating an obsolete one. It also was done for a very specific reason: to try to recapture tons of valuable spectrum that could be put to much more valuable and practical use. Mandating FM tuners is just a waste of time and money in a quixotic attempt by broadcasters to prop up FM radio. My mobile phone has an FM receiver today, and I've never even looked at it. Some manufacturers have chosen to put this technology into devices today -- and that's fine, if they choose to do so. But, mandating it as part of a backroom political deal? No thanks.

Filed Under: deals, fm radio, performance rights, performance tax, radio
Companies: nab, riaa

If You're Trying To Unseat An Entrenched Technology, You Need To Offer Some Significant Improvements

from the but-I've-already-got-one dept

Despite the technological advances that constantly turn our heads, plenty of old technologies just keep hanging on, because they do a more than acceptable job, while their would-be replacements don't offer enough improvement to justify additional expense or hassle. A case in point is FM radio. It's ubiquitous, it's effective, and it's pretty cheap. The quality of the content it carries may be another matter, but the technology itself remains sound and in wide use, despite its age. But many countries are trying to supplant or replace analog radio with digital technology; in Europe, the DAB standard is popular, while in the US, there's a format called HD Radio. Neither has really caught on with consumers, though, but it's not hard to understand why: they don't offer enough improvement over good ol' FM. A big justification for HD Radio is the ability for broadcasters to charge listeners for access to their content, which isn't exactly a strong user benefit.

But in the case of DAB, or at least its implementation in the UK, it sounds like digital radio is actually a step backwards from FM. Over at The Guardian's technology blog, Jack Schofield compares the merits of DAB against internet radio, and comes down firmly on the internet radio side. It's not hard to understand why, when he points out that the UK's DAB system offers worse sound quality than FM, thanks to an inefficient codec, and from the sounds of things, fewer choices of stations. Leaving the digital-vs.-internet radio argument aside, why would people pony up for a new radio to replace their FM ones when it offers them a lesser experience? Technologies don't get replaced in the market solely because they're old, they get replaced when something that offers real improvements at a reasonable price comes along.

Filed Under: digital radio, fm radio, hd radio