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This came up a couple of weeks ago, but I was busy at the time and kind of just glanced at the headline, and I’ve only just had a chance to go through it:
ITEM: The RIAA and the National Association of Broadcasters is lobbying Congress to mandate that FM radios be built into cell phones, PDAs, and other portable electronics.
Why? Because it will save the music industry from financial ruin by forcing radio stations to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more a year in royalty fees.
Make sense?
That’s okay – I don’t get it either.
I do understand the basic argument behind all this: currently, radio stations have to pay the music labels songwriting royalties in exchange for playing music on-air. The RIAA – which is being destroyed by computers stealing their CDs – wants to force the radio stations to pay performance royalties as well (under the logic that broadcast of a song counts as a public performance). Congress is working on a law to that effect, and the radio stations are against the idea for obvious reasons.
So, the RIAA and NAB have struck a compromise:
Still don’t get it? Me neither. I do understand performance royalties. What I don’t understand is why the NAB thinks more FM radio ownership will translate to more listeners – or at least the same listeners being able to tune in away from their car or home – in an age when you've got plenty of other options for portable entertainment (MP3s, podcasts, streaming audio, newsfeeds, etc).
Also, $100 million a year is chump change to the music industry. U2 raked in more than that last year just from their concert tour. That’s gross, not net, but you see what I’m saying.
But then I can’t think of a single RIAA plan to save the music industry that was ever based on logic. So why start now?
As for putting FM radios in phones, the Consumer Electronics Association is annoyed, and for good reason. It’s not trivial or cheap to stick a radio receiver in a device that already has a bunch of radios in it. The average smartphone, for example, already has a 3G transceiver, a Wi-Fi transceiver and a Bluetooth transceiver that all have to co-exist in that small case without interfering with each other or the rest of the electronics inside. And if you own an iPhone 4, you may have heard it has issues.
To be sure, there are plenty of phones with FM radios already, but they tend to be cheaper phones that don’t have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth chips in them. So yeah, a govt mandate is going to cause problems. And possibly lead to higher phone prices.
But hey, at least you’ll have a viable option to those ripped MP3s you’d rather be listening to.
Bad signal,
This is dF
ITEM: The RIAA and the National Association of Broadcasters is lobbying Congress to mandate that FM radios be built into cell phones, PDAs, and other portable electronics.
Why? Because it will save the music industry from financial ruin by forcing radio stations to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more a year in royalty fees.
Make sense?
That’s okay – I don’t get it either.
I do understand the basic argument behind all this: currently, radio stations have to pay the music labels songwriting royalties in exchange for playing music on-air. The RIAA – which is being destroyed by computers stealing their CDs – wants to force the radio stations to pay performance royalties as well (under the logic that broadcast of a song counts as a public performance). Congress is working on a law to that effect, and the radio stations are against the idea for obvious reasons.
So, the RIAA and NAB have struck a compromise:
The two sides hope to strike a grand bargain: radio would agree to pay around $100 million a year (less than it feared), but in return it would get access to a larger market through the mandated FM radio chips in portable devices.
Still don’t get it? Me neither. I do understand performance royalties. What I don’t understand is why the NAB thinks more FM radio ownership will translate to more listeners – or at least the same listeners being able to tune in away from their car or home – in an age when you've got plenty of other options for portable entertainment (MP3s, podcasts, streaming audio, newsfeeds, etc).
Also, $100 million a year is chump change to the music industry. U2 raked in more than that last year just from their concert tour. That’s gross, not net, but you see what I’m saying.
But then I can’t think of a single RIAA plan to save the music industry that was ever based on logic. So why start now?
As for putting FM radios in phones, the Consumer Electronics Association is annoyed, and for good reason. It’s not trivial or cheap to stick a radio receiver in a device that already has a bunch of radios in it. The average smartphone, for example, already has a 3G transceiver, a Wi-Fi transceiver and a Bluetooth transceiver that all have to co-exist in that small case without interfering with each other or the rest of the electronics inside. And if you own an iPhone 4, you may have heard it has issues.
To be sure, there are plenty of phones with FM radios already, but they tend to be cheaper phones that don’t have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth chips in them. So yeah, a govt mandate is going to cause problems. And possibly lead to higher phone prices.
But hey, at least you’ll have a viable option to those ripped MP3s you’d rather be listening to.
Bad signal,
This is dF
