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A Bill That Would Require Artists to Be Paid for U.S. Radio Play Is Likely Dead. But the Fight Isn’t Over (Guest Column)
The fight to get artists paid for radio play isn't over despite the likely failure of the American Music Fairness Act in Congress.
As readers of Billboard may know from previouscoverage, the United States remains one of the only countries in the world — joined by North Korea, Iran, Rwanda and China — that does not have a complete public performance right for sound recordings. Payola is a contraction of “pay” and “Victrola” from the time when Tin Pan Alley publishers employed song pluggers to travel the country in the late 1800s, promoting sheet music with gifts, money and even prostitutes. Record labels began hiring third-party “indie promoters” to give large sums of money to radio stations, financing their ticket giveaways, events and contests in return for influence on programmers’ playlists.
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