The seemingly-endless battle over terrestrial performance royalties for recordings continued Tuesday in Washington, DC.  As usual, the typical combatants are facing off, including the RIAA and NAB (National Association of Broadcasters).  And once again, the topic du jour was the Performance Rights Act.

The musicFirst Coalition – whose membership includes the RIAA, A2IM, and the American Federation of Musicians – held a morning press conference on Capitol Hill to reinvigorate its performance-focused campaign.  The push is coming from an expanded coalition that now includes the NAACP.  “Being paid fairly for your labor is one of the most basic civil rights,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington Bureau and senior vice president for Advocacy and Policy.

Of course, the NAB was also blowing its own special-interest horn.  The group is currently corralling local station owners on the Hill to protest what it terms a ‘tax,’ and pushing hot-button topics like foreign ownership (a reference to EMI, UMG, and Sony Music), jobs, struggling artists, and taxes.  “The unfortunate truth is that this legislation benefits foreign-owned record labels to the detriment of ’struggling artists’,” NAB executive vice president Dennis Wharton said.  “This is a job-killing bill that threatens a musician’s number one promotional vehicle while transferring hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of companies based in Tokyo, Paris and London.”

Report by Alexandra Osorio.

Tags: American Federation of Musicians, EMI, National Association of Broadcasters, Record label

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