Love Nor Money

Mark Lawson had a good feature on Front Row (BBC R4) last night, in which he talked to representatives of the music industry, the PRS, PPL and commercial radio, about charges levied and royalties collected from radio broadcasts, including the requirement for workplaces in which employees listen to the radio to buy a licence.

Commercial radio and small business owners now argue that airplay constitutes promotion for bands and want to wriggle out of paying for licences. The PRS and PPL deny that airplay influences the public to buy music, either in the traditional record shop or by purchasing mp3 downloads, especially in today's economic climate and are desperate to hold on to their income streams, if only to preserve their very own existence.

In theory, artists receive a royalty each time their record is broadcast. The larger the listener catchment area and the higher the audience number, the greater the fee. Last time I checked, daytime airplay on national BBC Radio 1 would earn you about £75 a time. Trouble is, until shockingly recently, nobody kept full details of what was played and a method known (ironically) as sampling was used, in which the radio playlist for perhaps one day a week was analysed and extrapolated to give a figure for the week. In practice, this meant that your record could be played ten times a day, six days a week but you wouldn't receive a penny if they happened to have sampled details on the seventh day.

This system was great for the likes of the major label artist, your Madonnas and Take Thats and Phil Collinses, not to mention the royalty collection societies themselves, who had a good slice of pie, but the independent artist was left out in the cold. The sheer amount of paperwork involved in ensuring that everything was correctly registered with the relevant organisations was beyond most people and often, unscrupulous small labels would sign the rights to royalties over to themselves without the band knowing.

The era of the mp3 download has spelt disaster for the complacent suits at the MCPS/PRS alliance, who invited an instigator of the British occupation of Iraq, Geoff Hoon - of all people - to be the guest speaker at a recent AGM at Abbey Road, paid for out of the royalties and licence fees meant for artists. The independent artist, however, at last has the chance to earn an income from mp3 downloads which hasn't been picked over by half a dozen industry suits up the ladder and is no worse off than before.

Yet, there was a middle of the road songwriter, who also happened to have something to do with the PRS, bleating on Front Row last night about musicians and artists not being able to survive, tying in quite nicely with the series of programmes with Melvyn Bragg this week about evolution : If you can't survive, give up, roll over, there are plenty behind you who will continue to make music - have always made music - for no financial reward and very often, that's where you'll find the innovators, the talented, the fresh and those worth listening to. This guy really believed that unless songwriters got paid, there'd be no music.

Doh !