Time for the piper to get paid.
Broadcast AM and FM radio stations in the United States do not pay royalties to the performers of the music they play for your listening pleasure.
Surprising? Unbelievable? It is - and shameful, and wrong.
A bipartisan bill now in Congress would end this unfairness. Here's wishing it a speedy and deserved progress to the president's desk - and his rightful signature.
Broadcast radio does pay the writers and publishers of music, as it should - but
not
the performers. The United States is among the few countries where this is so. (Others are China, Iran and North Korea - a nice bunch.)
Internet, satellite and cable radio pay performance royalties, but broadcast radio always has been exempt. It's a sweetheart deal of sweetheart deals - especially now, when so much radio is purveyed by huge corporate concerns.
When you hear Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Madonna or Beyoncé on the radio, the songwriters and publishers get paid - but the band, essentially, is playing for free.
That's one of the many hard things about the professional musician's life: People expect you to share your hard-earned talents, your creativity, for nothing.
Musicians may make music seem easy, but that's because they're good at it.
And radio is freely accessible to everyone, which may make it seem as if everything on radio should be gratis. But why?
Whenever you hear a tune, a song, an opera, any music over the public airwaves, it took a lot of very hard work to get it there.
Performers should get paid - there's simply no reason to think they should happily play for free.
In December, the Performance Rights Act of 2007 was introduced into the House by Reps. Howard Berman (D., Calif.) and Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and into the Senate by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) and Orrin Hatch (R., Utah).
Now in the judiciary committees of both chambers, the act would remove the exemption for broadcast radio and require performers to be paid a small performance royalty each time their songs are played.
Advocacy groups such as MusicFIRST (Fairness in Radio Starting Today) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists are working hard to keep "fair play for airplay" in the public view.
True, some of the money may go to the big music companies - but still, the men and women who perform also will begin to get payment they have deserved for generations.
True also, the world of music is changing fast, switching from old media to new in confusing lurches. But the new media are actually
paying
the performers!
It's time to end an exemption that for 80 years - since the debut of broadcast radio - has been unfair and way out of tune.