[BC] Who is the customer?

[David Lawrence]

On 1/23/06 7:01 PM, one Larry Fuss <lfuss2 at cox.net> wrote:

 >> Radio stations make money from music, so ASCAP wants a piece of the pie.
 >
 > Actually, no.  We make money from selling advertising.  Two stations with
 > comparable signals can play the same music, yet station A bills much more
 > than station B.  Station A gets penalized for having the better sales staff
 > by paying higher ASCAP and BMI fees.  Who really made that money?  The music
 > or the sales staff?

Radio stations have two constituencies that they must serve, as does any
advertiser supported media: their customers, which are the advertisers, and
their consumers, which are the listeners - not one or the other.

I find it amusing that you use the phrase "penalized" - in any market, the
fees are very similar.

 >
 >> As the courts have ruled the composers created the song, so they own it,
 > so
 > they must be compensated for your use of their song,, remember it  did not
 > exist before they wrote it.  Of course the publishers don't want to be left
 > out and then the artist feel they need more money.
 >
 > I've long said that the artist should pay the composer for the use of the
 > song.  They're the one that is truly "using" it and stand to make the most
 > from it.  We make no money from the "public performance" of the song -
 > nobody pays to listen to our radio station.

But no one would listen to the Best Hits of the 80's, 90's and Today, or
Today's Contemporary Christian Rock, or The Music of Your Life if they
didn't actually play Madonna, POD or Frank Sinatra. So, to say that we make
no money from the public performance is to say that Comedy Central makes no
money playing stand-up performances. Of course we make money from the core
content we perform - it's what draws the consumer (listeners) in large
enough numbers to attract the customer (advertisers) to pay to reach them.
No content, no listeners...no listeners, no advertisers.

David