Why Is The FCC Even Giving The Time Of Day To RIAAs Bogus Radio Witchhunt?
Earlier this year, MusicFirst, a lobbying group that is run by the RIAA and pushing for a special tax on radio stations for daring to promote songs, came out with its latest in a long list of bizarre claims, demanding that the FCC investigate the fact that radio stations were supposedly boycotting musicians who supported the Performance Royalty tax. There were numerous problems with this claim. First, we thought it was rather hypocritical of MusicFirst to demand that radio stations play these artists, when it was the very same MusicFirst that was also claiming that radio was “a kind of piracy” for playing the music of these very same artists without paying a performance tax. So, apparently if a radio station does play these artists, it’s piracy. If it doesn’t play these artists, it requires an FCC investigation. Beyond that, MusicFirst failed to note that many of the artists topping the charts (including the Black Eyed Peas, who topped the charts at the time) were some of the most outs
