By Katie Kieffer

Taylor Swift

Do me a favor and turn on your radio. Wait five minutes and you’ll probably hear a DJ venting about the recording industry’s push for legislation that could effectively tax the next Taylor Swift or T.I. off free local radio.

I think local radio DJs are right to question this proposed legislation, since this hefty “tax” or fee would make it difficult for new artists to emerge. It would work as a financial disincentive for radio stations to take on the risk of featuring new artists.

The fee that current legislative proposals ask radio stations to pay in order to air a record would be split between the performer and the copyright owner. While some performers own the copyright for their record, often times a foreign-owned record company owns the copyright. So, in addition to moving cash away from the emerging artistic community, the performance tax would move capital out of the U.S. during a recession.

On the other hand, it is difficult for me to sympathize with music-based free local radio. Similar fees are already imposed on the more technologically advanced digital radio broadcasters, but traditional analog radio broadcasters think they deserve a break. Music-heavy local analog radio cannot expect to receive special treatment and exclusions from music distribution fees because it offered the “first” broadcast format. There should not be “squatters’ rights” in music distribution.

Local radio frames its concern over the proposed performance tax legislation thus: “The recording industry wants to impose a performance tax that would financially hurt local radio stations, stifle new artists and harm the listening public who rely on free local radio.” I think local radio needs to offer up a more convincing argument, or at least prove that the “listening public” will be harmed if “free local radio” disappears.

Free local radio should have to compete – and I mean really compete – with digital radio. If I can listen to the songs I want, when I want, on my iPod or computer, local radio needs to show me why I should tune into a local station with commercials and self-aggrandizing DJs that repeat Top 40 hits all day long.

Unless you are an antique radio collector, you’re probably not going to sit down and stare at a refrigerator-sized radio (like the girl below) when you could be multitasking with your sleek iPod playlist at the gym or blasting your personal set of tunes from Pandora on your laptop as you make dinner.

Image credit: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs

There is no Constitutional right to listen to free music on the radio. There is also no evidence of inevitable “public harm” if the crass DJs who monopolize the local morning airwaves with ridiculous games and “news” consisting of celebrity gossip suddenly disappeared.

The public might breathe a sigh of relief if blasé local radio stations went extinct. Silence might be better than having Bad Romance perpetually in your head because it was played for the umpteenth time – in one hour – on multiple stations. Clearly, free local radio needs to make a better case for why it deserves an exclusion from the performance tax.

That said, government intervention will not resolve the issues facing the radio industry and the recording industry today. The government negatively intervened in satellite radio by severely restricting the number of radio spectrum licenses to two. This is why we only have one major mass-market broadcaster of satellite radio in the U.S., Sirius XM Radio, Inc., when there could have been multiple competing providers.

It is inconsistent for many elected officials to protest performance tax legislation where local radio stations would pay a fee to air records, while they seem to have no issue with fees imposed on digital radio, the modern broadcast format.

Let’s bring radio broadcasting back to a free market system where internet radio and free local radio compete with each other on a level playing field, and consumers can vote with their ears. In talk radio, the results just rolled in: Of the top ten radio talk show hosts, nine have conservative leanings.

Top conservative talk radio hosts, Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh. Image: Diamond/WireImage; Corkery/News; Lovekin/Getty

Neither the government nor the recording industry should be able to stalemate the future careers of up-and-coming young artists with a performance tax, impose a monopoly on new forms of radio or have a double standard for local and internet-based radio.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Economy, Entertainment & Culture, Free Speech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.