Summer Music Deals

Says an email I just got.  What sort of deals are they?  Do they mean more money for people who don't have a lot?  Because it seems most indie bands don't make much money at all.

One way they might make money is through "performing rights organizations" like BMI.  I don't pretend to understand how BMI works (this article isn't entirely helpful) but at WRFL recently I volunteered to tally playlists for three days to report to BMI.  The understanding is that this "random sampling" would enable the company to fairly distribute royalties.

Except RFL isn't a playlisted radio station (that would've made my job easier).  Each deejay picks more or less what he or she wants to play (there are requirements to play new material but the deejay can pick from hundreds of new releases) so even if we might play one particular band or artist, we might not have played them on those three days.  (That does explain how crappy bands like the Eagles keep making money from radio, though - on commercial "classic rock" stations, they're played two dozen times a day - & that's just "Hotel California.")

More interesting to me is that some of the deejays at RFL chose to play bands during that period who didn't need any of the money we pay in fees to BMI.  Among the folks to whom we sent money were commercial rap superstars like Kanye West & T-Pain, filthy rich rock & roll dinosaurs like Fleetwood Mac & Pink Floyd, any group Jack White's been involved with, & (even though I appreciate them, I would have avoided playing them during this time) great but super rich artists like Bowie & Ray Davies.

I used to say, back in my KVRX days, that every time someone plays a band or a record that they can hear virtually anywhere else, it takes time from a band or performer that no one's ever heard - which, let's be honest, has a fifty-fifty chance of being better than the commercial radio mainstay.

To be fair, I am not entirely sure the deejays at RFL understood what BMI was or what it meant to them personally, but the fact that they play the stuff they were playing regardless might make me a little worried about non-commercial radio...

Except the vast majority of what was played was by great, deserving, mostly unknown artists.  It's nice to know that some BMI money - if they have accounts - is going to them.  So I can grumble about some of my colleagues playing commercial radio crap - knowing full well more than most of them don't.  & won't.