Has anyone heard about this bill. I was watching Jermaine Dupri recent episode of Living the Life when he mentioned this bill.
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Proposed Performance Tax Could Be Black Radio’s Death Knell
Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:01 pm
By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com
A bill scheduled to come before the full House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, which would impose a royalty on music aired on the radio and, some opponents say, spell the end of black radio, faced growing scrutiny Tuesday.
The Performance Rights Act sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., would require radio stations to pay a fee to everyone who performs on a record, from the composer to the artist(s) to background musicians and singers to the person or company that owns the copyright to the song. That would be in addition to fees that broadcasters already pay to artist associations ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.
Radio station owners, professional broadcast associations and other groups, who oppose the measure, say that rather than rewarding the background musicians and writers, whom the record labels contend are not adequately compensated through the other fees, as much as 50 percent of the new fees collected will go directly into the pocket of record label owners -- many of whom are headquartered outside the U.S.
Cathy Hughes, founder and board chairman of Radio One, and radio personality Tom Joyner say the bill, also called the "performance tax," could almost certainly spell the end for urban radio because the additional costs would discourage the activities that help promote artists' work.
"It will put a majority of black-owned stations out of business," Hughes said Tuesday on the Tom Joyner Morning Show.
To read the rest of this article, go to
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles...
Posted By: Candice Johnson
Thursday, May 14th 2009 at 3:08AM
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