In an op-ed in the New York Times this morning (1/3/09) under the headline “Ten for the Next Ten,” the Irish-born pop star and prominent gadfly Paul David Hewson, better known as Bono, listed ten ideas he’d like to see gain currency the next ten years. Radio people should be concerned with the first, under the title “Intellectual Property Developers.”
Bono doesn’t mention radio. He only laments what the internet has done to newspapers and to the music business, and predicts the same will happen to the movie and TV industries when internet (and presumably wi-fi) bandwidth permits.
He vilifies “rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.” He doesn’t mention the RIAA’s effort to make broadcasters pay royalties for playing records, much less the oppressive streaming royalties already in effect—but he does resort to the same fallacious arguments used to support those outrages.
He cites “the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us,” and offers a warning: “Don’t get over-rewarded rock stars on this bully pulpit, or famous actors; find the next Cole Porter, if he/she hasn’t already left to write jingles.”
Like the RIAA, he conveniently ignores the fact that those “young, fledgling songwriters” don’t get any money from the record labels for their recorded performances anyway, thanks to contracts that let the labels recoup inflated production and marketing costs before paying any royalties; only “over-rewarded rock stars” do. And when those big rock stars have an audit done (and they’re the only ones who can afford that), they invariably find that they’ve been stiffed by the labels, too.
This kind of nonsense can’t go unchallenged. Both broadcasters and webcasters (especially the latter) should be flooding the NYT with letters refuting Bono’s specious pontificating on this.
You can read his piece for yourself here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03bono.html?hp
Bono doesn’t mention radio. He only laments what the internet has done to newspapers and to the music business, and predicts the same will happen to the movie and TV industries when internet (and presumably wi-fi) bandwidth permits.
He vilifies “rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.” He doesn’t mention the RIAA’s effort to make broadcasters pay royalties for playing records, much less the oppressive streaming royalties already in effect—but he does resort to the same fallacious arguments used to support those outrages.
He cites “the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us,” and offers a warning: “Don’t get over-rewarded rock stars on this bully pulpit, or famous actors; find the next Cole Porter, if he/she hasn’t already left to write jingles.”
Like the RIAA, he conveniently ignores the fact that those “young, fledgling songwriters” don’t get any money from the record labels for their recorded performances anyway, thanks to contracts that let the labels recoup inflated production and marketing costs before paying any royalties; only “over-rewarded rock stars” do. And when those big rock stars have an audit done (and they’re the only ones who can afford that), they invariably find that they’ve been stiffed by the labels, too.
This kind of nonsense can’t go unchallenged. Both broadcasters and webcasters (especially the latter) should be flooding the NYT with letters refuting Bono’s specious pontificating on this.
You can read his piece for yourself here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03bono.html?hp