Gmail - Future of Music Newsletter #58

Gmail - Future of Music Newsletter #58: "1. Indie artists win major victory as Clear Channel abandons effort to force artists to give up performance royalties

A little over a week ago, the Future of Music Coalition sent you an email announcing a new campaign to end a sneaky move by Clear Channel to not pay indie artists' royalties. We are pleased to announce Clear Channel has capitulated – in just 10 days.

Here's the background: As part of a settlement to end an FCC investigation into allegations of payola at some of their stations, Clear Channel and other broadcasters agreed to play 4,200 hours of local and indie music. Clear Channel set up a web page attached to each of its stations’ web sites that allowed local and indie artists to submit their music for consideration, but the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) found some troubling language in the license agreement: artists had to check a licensing agreement that said that the artist granted 'Clear Channel the royalty-free non-exclusive right and license, in perpetuity […] to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, digitally perform […]' the content submitted via their website.

Clear Channel was asking artists to waive their performance royalties as a consideration for airplay. In other words, Clear Channel had responded to allegations of payola with a pay-for-play scheme aimed at indie arti"