Internet Radio & now also Mixcloud banning single artist shows - why the PRS/PPL doesn't make sense.
Why are the big copyright agencies for the record industry dead set against smaller broadcasters playing more than 2 or 3 songs by a single artist in a row or within an hour? and does this really achieve anything? (even looking at it from their point of view), I argue that it does not and look into the restriction here.
Mixcloud which for years didn't seem to have this restriction at all has now hit uploaders with it as well.
Want to play copyrighted songs over the interweb? you've got to ask these guys first, mmmkay!
Internet radio and copyrighted music has been a bit of a contentious issue for the 2 decades or so since it became a thing, at first back in the Noughties the rights organisations both sides of the Atlantic who gatekeep copyrighted pop music etc were almost trying to suppress the whole concept entirely, and then the licences they did come up for "webcasters" came with a whole bunch of restrictions, that seemed to suck the fun and joy out of it And there's none I personally dislike more than their idea of trying to block you from playing too many songs by the same artist, it blocks the idea of tribute shows, fandom shows relating to a particular artist and covering some soundtracks from film/TV/Games etc properly as well in some cases.
There have been more big names once again unfortunately departing during 2023 such as Tina Turner which got me thinking about the single artist restriction issue again, it affects internet radio stations who have paid for the basic webcasters licence to use copyrighted music from the PRS/PPL in the UK & other countries, and also in the last 6 months the same sort of rule has begun to be enforced on Mixcloud (which used to be free of it), it goes something like this, stations can't play any more than 3 songs by the same artist within 3 hours, and it's also no more than 2 consecutively (from the same album) or 4 overall.
Mixcloud which is a site where you can host radio shows with actual copyrighted music in them and also things like mashups and mixes of songs (providing they're contained within an upload that is longer than 15 minutes) has now also fallen victim to this restriction, for many years Mixcloud didn't enforce this single artist restriction in uploads to the site but must recently have only been able to continue with a copyright licence that enforces it, at first this only applied to the US but has now hit the UK (and presumably more countries).
Mixcloud now has this blurb about it;
"Please make sure that your shows only contain:
Maximum 3 songs from one album (and no more than 2 consecutively)
Maximum 4 songs from one recording artist (and no more than 3 consecutively)
Maximum 4 songs from one compilation (and no more than 3 consecutively)
"
Anyone can see why this is an annoying/boring rule for internet broadcasters but let's actually break down why it doesn't even make any sense anyway.
It's an annoying rule for a few reasons and it's hard to get your head round what they're trying to achieve with it.
It seems to affect webcasters with the most basic licence where there are no real reporting requirements (eg to list specific songs played and when), and from what I can work out this restriction might be lifted on a higher level of licence from PRS/PPL. This is irksome in that many internet stations haven't bothered having a licence at all because it's kind of not worth it with the amount of listeners they can typically get (the licence is after all hundreds of pounds a year) but if they do "the right thing" they will hit by more restrictions compared to just going "pirate".
You can plainly see that "the big boys" don't have such a rule, you see things such as a George Michael countdown being aired on BBC Radio 2, big group owned stations such as Heart (owned by corporation Global) doing tributes to Whitney Houston by doing an hour of her songs back to back following on from the news of her sudden death, and with Tina Turner having just suddenly died at the age of 83 shortly before I wrote this, you can see that music video channels such as Magic & Now 80s responded pretty quickly by having her songs back to back over slots of an hour, so the copyright licence the likes of them have must obviously allow this, whilst "smaller" broadcasters are prevented from doing so (presumably unless they buy a very high price licence).
Music video TV stations such as this often have single artist shows/blocks.
The BBC obviously doesn't have to stick to a max of 3 George Michael songs over 3 hours! When this played out on Radio 2 on one Bank Holiday weekend (or whenever it actually was!)
Why do they seem so keen on preventing webcasters from putting out back to back songs by the same artist when taking Tina Turner as an example you could think of any of her songs and have it playing within seconds on Youtube, and also on Spotify (which is also fairly easily accessed for free), if it's to prevent an almost de facto copy of a whole album or the equivalent of a sort of "Greatest Hits" compilation being played out within a single radio show, it only makes the slightest bit of sense when you think about how some people seem to have treated Mixcloud (just uploading a back to back upload of songs uninterrupted by anything such as radio idents and presenting a radio show over the songs (gosh I almost find myself agreeing with the record industry here where's the creativity in doing that? but there are some retro charts etc doing this, but not that much production going on), but surely the average radio show about an artist wouldn't be enough of a substitute for a fan enough to stop them wanting to get hold of the songs seperately (and it would then be up to them whether that is legally or illegally), and of course each song is already available on demand via the internet, so it's all the restriction is serving to do is to make internet radio/Mixcloud a worse experience in return for no real gain to anyone. Other than this I'm not sure what else they are trying to restrict, single artist dedicated stations?
So to summarise it's that;
1. Makes getting an internet radio licence seem more cumbersome and restrictive than simply going "pirate" and doing without one in the first place. Ie small stations are expected to pay hundreds of pounds a year to be more restricted than if they hadn't bothered. Bedroom radio and all that!
2. Doesn't apply to the big boys, very expensive or perhaps just impossible for the "little man".
3. Doesn't prevent any piracy/copying anyway, in nearly all cases all songs from major artists are available via Youtube/Spotify anyway!
I don't suppose it will be that easy to get the restriction removed for standard webcasters and on Mixcloud but would think it's a good idea for internet broadcasters to be asking why, and to contact the PRS/PPL (soundExchange/RIAA in US) etc and put these arguments. At least we could ask if exemptions could be made for tribute shows (around the time of a major music celebrity passing on), and perhaps for exemptions to be made if a show is not just a collection of back to back tracks so there would be no easy copies of the music to be made from it anyway!
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