While the National Association of Broadcasters once again works to pass the Local Radio Freedom Act, something which would be harmful to recording artists everywhere, it becomes increasingly important for Congress to take real action regarding artist’ performance rights.
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Guest post by Chris Castle of Music Tech Solutions
Friends don’t let friends get LRFA’d.
Once again we’ve started a new session of Congress with really old news–he National Association of Broadcasters is yet again circulating the reactionary Local Radio Freedom Act (or the grammatically challenged “LRFA”) that’s been warmed over and served up again from the last Congress.
LRFA’s purpose is twofold. Get unsuspecting Members to support a policy to deny recording artists their fair share for the performance of their recordings on terrestrial radio by aligning America with the practices of Iran and North Korea but is out of step with the business of every other major world economy. And because America denies the world’s recording artists the same treatment that American artists would enjoy overseas, America’s trading partners justifiably refuse Americans reciprocal treatment in foreign countries. Which is more embarrassing?
It’s not that American artists don’t earn the foreign performance royalties–it’s that the royalties earned overseas by hardworking Americans are denied to them because Congress is misled by the NAB into thinking that fair compensation is somehow bad policy and the US denies equal treatment to foreign artists. Why should those countries–who actually care about their creative class–grant reciprocal treatment to Americans?
It goes like this: When you hear Aretha Franklin sing “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” written by Otis Redding on the radio in your car, that economic transaction results in Otis Redding (the songwriter) getting paid as a songwriter under the government’s 75 year consent decrees (another sad story). Aretha Franklin, however, gets ZERO.
When that same recording is played in the UK, Otis Redding still gets paid as the songwriter, but the artist does, too. Except that because Aretha is an American, her money is never paid to her.
This obvious inequity is what motivated over 14,000 musicians and music fans to sign the I Respect Music petition in the last Congress and created the largest grass roots movement in the history of the music business with a positive message. Because friends don’t let friends get LRFA’d.
It’s one of the few issues left that is truly bipartisan.
When Blake Morgan and the IRM team took the 14,000 signatures on the IRM petition to Congress, they had to carry two huge books of signatures. And yet, we once again are presented with getting LRFA’d.
LRFA is the Alinsky-style straw man–demonize your opponent as something you want people to believe your opponent to be (a “tax” for example), then perpetuate that mischaracterization no matter what. (In the current parlance, something pretty close to gaslighting fake news.)
This LRFA legacy “nonbinding resolution” has become an evergreen in the arsenal of the NAB’s gaslighting efforts to perpetuate exploitation of recording artists for one reason and one reason only–because they can. The NAB gets a bunch of Members to sign up, don’t tell them the truth about what they signed, and hope that nobody tells them otherwise until it’s too late. But when Blake teaches the I Respect Music story on college campuses across America, it requires little explanation.
What the NAB’s vast army of lobbyists will do with the LRFA after they largely dupe Members into signing on to it (and dupe Members staffs into allowing their bosses to sign on without doing the real staff work to know how they are being duped) is to perpetuate the greatest inequity in the Copyright Act by convincing members that any performance right legislation is doomed to fail so why support it?
How do we know this? Because the NAB did the same thing in the last session. When artists met with Members in their offices to discuss what happened, it turned out that many Members had no idea what the real story was behind LRFA.
It’s important that your Member of Congress understand what the NAB is up to with this gaslighting campaign. The truth behind this great inequity needs to be told along with the hard economic facts–because of faux legislation like LRFA, America is leaving hundreds of millions in real revenue from foreign countries that could easily be repatriated by American artists.
Not to mention supporting future American artists.
We cannot let another session of Congress pass by without fixing this great inequity. Don’t let your Member of Congress be fooled again–because friends don’t let friends get LRFA’d.
Call your representatives and sign the I Respect Music petition by clicking here.
And vote.
