At the Artists’ Pay for Radio Play Rally at Le Poisson Rouge in New York on Tuesday night (Feb. 25), Byrne joined hosts musician Marc Ribot and “Freeloading” author Chris Ruen as well as a slew of other artists, including Tift Merritt, REM’s Mike Mills and Rosanne Cash (via video) as well as the Future Music Coalition’s Kevin Erickson to perform and/or rally for performance royalties for terrestrial radio airplay.

 

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Erickson of the Future of Music Coalition, a D.C.-based non-profit which advocates on behalf of artists, remarked on the past failure of legislation for the issue, “Why is there a brick wall? Because multibillion dollar broadcasting companies like Clear Channel and their lobbyists at the National Association of Broadcasters have stopped it. In these debates, they purport to speak for mom and pop radio, and local radio.  This is hilarious because these are the same people who because of media deregulation and consolidation, bought up local radio stations, erased their local character, fired all the DJs and replaced them with robots that play nearly the same playlists in every city. These people do not care about local (…) If the creative community speaks as one voice, we can finally bury the pernicious notion that musicians are obligated to work for free and be grateful for the exposure.”*

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