RIAA, Royalties & Radio…..

Do you or your students ever make use of internet “radio” streaming sites? Sites like Pandora or non commercial radio stations affiliated with NPR or Pacifica for example offer wonderful teaching resources, that is if they are able to afford the recent royalty rate changes for digital streaming.

While the issues of legality and downloading music are familiar or becoming more familiar to our students and field, the complexities of royalties remain a mystery to most of our students and many of us as well.

For example, how might we answer a student’s question regarding the argument that the RIAA is protecting musicians’ financial interests by preventing downloading when it is also arguing to lower songwriters’ royalty rates?

How do we answer students who ask how this decision would effect the less mainstream artists that they know about only through online digital music streaming sites or what happens to them when the places that stream their music are no longer able to support the streaming financially?

How might we help students make informed decisions regarding initiatives such as the save our streams [as in digital music] petition to congress?

Complicating the conversation over royalties even further is the possibility that “downloads” may be legally considered a “public performance”.

These and other issues regarding digital music and royalties are complex. How might we help our students and ourselves negotiate these complexities?