JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Legitimizing Pay-for-Play

Billy had it mostly right in his first response.

But Soundclick is a silly comparison to anything that matters in the music industry. That's a site populated by artists/writers and listened to by the exact same group. I bet less than 10% of their traffic comes from interested listeners without a direct vested interest in someone already on the site (i.e. themselves, their spouse/sig other, relative or close friend). Music fans would be nuts to go there looking randomly for music or trusting their "charts" or rankings as meaning anything. And they don't. (Sorry to rain on people's Soundclick parade... it's a great free hosting site, but that's about it).

Internet Radio can't make any money. Neither can companies like MySpace Music. They have no idea what to do with their gigantic database and user numbers. Their traffic dwarfs anything you mentioned above and yet they can't make a dime. And their supposed 17 million artists on the site that they've claimed in the press (a number I don't believe) can't generate any income for them to make a profit.

There's a lot of models that can work. I know one that I was just discussing tonight (and won't announce here at this time) which might solve all the problems without ruining the experience for the listener (critical) or costing the artist money (they don't have any anyway) or losing money for the station (they don't have any money either). It's complex but it's rational and works on a reasonable level. No pie in the sky ridiculous promises to anyone.. just a sane and rational and menthodical working solution for music fans, music makers and music facilitators to work together. Stay tuned for info on that hopefully after our JPF awards when I might be able to talk about it.

Until that or some other useful plan comes about, there's nothing to replace traditional radio. And anyone who spends a dime to pay anyone to play their music deserves to waste their money down an endless dead end drain. I am not even sure that doing so would ever even make you eligible for royalties because that type of blatant payola would never be allowed to work. In otherwords if you, as the artist/writer give something of value to the broadcaster in exchange for airplay, that is payola. Though you may theorize that because it's not over the public airwaves that payola laws and rules would not apply, but I am not sure I agree. Such an attempt to defraud the royalty system as authorized by the government would seem to be to either be already illegal or certainly heading quickly in that direction. If there is a legal loophole, it seems like someone at a PRO would close it pretty quickly.

And let's face it, the only person who will benefit from paying for airplay is the people taking your money. It's just a bonehead idea all around.

The best you could hope for is to get some airplay, be heard by someone who likes you and then watch them as they go get your music free from any number of resources. Heck, you can get nearly anything decent on YouTube anytime you want. Just type in the name of the song you want. Most of them are there in one form or another. Or you can pay several services less than the cost of a CD each month and have use and access to any music available digitally you want as much as you want.

Create great music.. learn how to perform it well and have fun. until you do all those things to the best of your ability (and few do) there's no much else to really worry about.

Brian