AMS-I President/CEO Reed Bunzel Responds To House Committee's "Stacked" Artist Royalty Hearing

CHARLESTON, S.C. (August 2, 2007): Statement of Reed Bunzel, CEO of American Media Services-Internet (AMS-I), in response to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property hearing on “Ensuring Artists Fair Compensation: Updating the Performance Right and Platform Parity for the 21st Century”:

“If we really wanted to talk about fairness, we wouldn't let a regulatory board that’s highly influenced by the recording industry cripple a burgeoning Internet radio industry. That’s exactly what the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) under the Library of Congress is doing by setting onerous royalty rates that every radio station – large and small – has to pay to reach listeners over the web. The result is a performance fee structure that is hardly fair or just.

“Unbelievably, a few Congressional supporters of the music industry now are trying to press forward with a similar fee that will severely cripple the terrestrial radio industry.

“No one is questioning that musicians deserve fair compensation for their works… certainly the great artists who appeared before the Subcommittee—Judy Collins and Sam Moore—as well as many others, ought to receive proper remuneration for their creative work. But that compensation was earned back when radio provided the airplay, and the promotional and marketing support, that helped them sell the billions of records that took them and hundreds of other artists to gold- or platinum status. This sort of compensation will only continue if both the broadcasting and the webcasting industries are allowed to survive and prosper. Only then can these industries adequately serve the listening – and the music-purchasing – public.

“Under the current CRB rate structure, many Internet radio stations will go dark, and many who planned to stream will give up their opportunity to do so. If this same equation were to be carried forward to terrestrial broadcasting, the recording industry quickly would drag the radio business down to its own level of budgetary calamity. How would this help established musicians, emerging artists, the record labels, consumers, or the future of media in general?

“The answer is pretty clear: it doesn’t. And so we call on Congress to pass without any further delay the House and Senate versions of the Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060 and S. 1353) in order to create true platform parity. And in the same breath, we ask these same members of Congress move to quickly strike down the music industry’s attempt to legislatively fix its own fiscal failures at the expense of traditional broadcasters.

“We also invite Ms. Collins and Mr. Moore to ‘look at web casting from both sides now,’ to paraphrase Ms. Collins. We are happy to offer both artists their own Internet radio stations so that they, too, can experience firsthand the power of this delivery platform.
American Media Services-Internet is an affiliate of American Media Services, and is designed to provide radio stations a turnkey solution in streaming audio content on the web, and generating revenue from online advertising. AMS-I was launched in December 2006 to assist radio station owners and operators in setting up and managing streaming radio sites.

AMS is a full-service radio brokerage, engineering and developmental engineering firm, and its developmental division leads the country in successfully implementing station upgrades by moving them into larger markets, dramatically increasing their value.