Media

RadioCentre boss wants an end to genre-defining station licences and “double taxation” on music rights

By | Published on Wednesday 7 March 2012

RadioCentre

The boss of RadioCentre, the trade body for a chunk of the commercial radio sector, has called on government to drop music genre requirements from the licences that many commercial stations operate under, and to change copyright law so that those who listen to radio services in public places do not need a music licence in addition to that already paid for by the broadcaster.

Andrew Harrison was speaking at the Westminster Media Forum about government plans to review the Communications Act. The RadioCentre chief said that he welcomed plans to reduce the regulation that governs the radio sector; legacy regulations which, he argued, made less sense as the radio industry competed with new unregulated media online.

But, he added, he feared that the momentum for deregulation plans had diminished somewhat, and could come unstuck amidst political movements for more regulation of the wider media and concerns about media plurality (political debates both caused by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the former by phone hacking at the News Of The World, the latter Murdoch’s ambition to own both News International and Sky News outright). He urged ministers to treat radio – a relatively small industry that punches above its weight in terms of impact and reach, he said – as a special case.

As for specific objectives, current obligations to make locally-targeted programmes locally to where they air, a frequent bug bear of the radio sector, and rules governing advertising and in-programme sponsorship were topics raised, though Harrison also focused on two key music issues.

First, he noted government issued licences still controlled what music many commercial stations must play. This system – dating from the era when FM stations in any one region were not meant to compete head on – was increasingly problematic, Harrison agued. In reality media regulator OfCom has become more willing in recent years to bend original music genre obligations, but it’s true that as radio owners merge previously local services to become quasi-national networks, some obligations to provide niche programming in off-peak in some areas do get in the way.

Said Harrison: “Radio stations are still licensed by music formats, which dictate the proportion of a particular genre they can play – a blunt instrument in an era of infinite music choice available through smartphones, downloads and streaming. Of course no other music service is required to seek permission from a government agency when determining the music that they play. Nor is the music industry itself given quotas by government on the sort of music they should promote or support”.

Staying with music, Harrison then focused on an issue of much more direct relevance to the music industry, the licence fees it pays to record labels and music publishers for the music it plays (another favourite moan of the broadcasters). Harrison said his members felt there was now a “disproportionate cost to our business of copyright for licensing music in the digital age”, while particularly focusing on the fact that any business owner wanting to play the radio on their premises, even just for staff, needed their own licences from PPL and PRS, what Harrison continues to dub as “double taxation”.

With work-place listening key to radio ratings, it looks like RadioCentre could be lobbying anew for a change in public performance licensing rules when the music being played in public has already been licensed by a broadcaster – a move that would be strongly opposed by the collecting societies, who are pushing the requirement for workplace music licences more now than ever before as their label and publisher members pressure their royalty agencies to up periphery licensing income.

Which could make any Communications Act review interesting for the music industry as well as the broadcasters and net providers.



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