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Letters: Taking Exception
Performance fee would hurt local radio stations
The editorial "Radio royalties: Respect" (Inquirer, March 8) missed a crucial point in the ongoing performance fee debate - record companies ask for their artists to be played on radio stations because they know it makes them profitable.
Nearly 173 million Americans listen to radio every day, delivering the mass audiences that turn musicians into rock stars and generate profits for the record companies and artists from sales of music, concerts tickets, T-shirts and more. Radio helped to make the careers of the artists mentioned in the editorial - from Madonna to Elvis. Recording artists and songwriters are compensated in different ways. Radio stations pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to songwriters and composers to play their music over the airwaves, while recording artists are compensated by both the record labels and consumers.
If passed, this performance fee will cost stations millions of dollars per year. Your local stations could go out of business; people in your community could lose jobs; and fewer stations on the air means less airplay for the artists the labels "want to help."
More than 160 members of Congress, including seven members of the Pennsylvania delegation, oppose a performance fee and support a bipartisan resolution opposing the record labels' proposed legislation.
Radio delivers local news, emergency information, traffic, weather and entertainment - all for free. Our radio stations are not government-owned or -funded, unlike in most other countries. There is no reason to adopt the model of other countries when the U.S. model has produced the most vibrant radio industry in the world.
Cathy Rought
Spokesperson
Free Radio Alliance
Washington
www.freeradioalliance.org
Spokesperson
Free Radio Alliance
Washington
www.freeradioalliance.org
