All is forgiven as Radio and Music industries enter new collaborative era #RadioAlive2018

It was a surprise to many to see CRA CEO Joan Warner on stage flanked by two music industry heavies, Dan Rosen, CEO of ARIA and Dean Ormston, Chief Executive of APRA, AMCOS at Friday’s Radio Alive conference.

 
In recent times, the radio and music industries have been at loggerheads. In 2012 the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) was rebuffed by the courts in their bid to increase the royalty paid to artists by stations for broadcasting their music. 
 
In 2014, the argument was over whether radio should pay a higher royalty for online simulcasts. That too went largely radio’s way.
 
The latest stoush has been over Australian music quotas. Radio said they were playing at least 20% home grown tracks, the music people reckoned they weren’t. 
 
So, earlier this year, CRA agreed to an independent ‘audit’ to find the truth and vowed to bring any stations that weren’t meeting their quotas into line. In fact, three separate monitoring agents, Aircheck, Radio Monitor and the radio industries own monitoring reporting provided airplay data. 
 
This was the situation in April 2018.


 
 The results presented by the panel on Friday showed that radio was now meeting their Australian music quotas and in many cases exceeded them.


 
 
Mr Ormston said, “It’s been a very positive collaboration. We found there are very few stations that don’t want to help Australian artists. But they also don’t want to be told how to run their business.”
 
Mr Rosen commented, “We thank CRA and its members for working with us collaboratively on this research project, and we welcome the conversation on how stations can better support Australian music. Radio stations are a vital part of the music ecosystem, and music is a critical component of radio’s success – so it makes perfect sense for our industries to jointly focus on ways to enhance our working relationship.”
 
Ms Warner said, We won’t always see eye to eye but we shouldn’t go to war over it.”
 
That panel was followed by another moderated by SCA presenter Ash London and featured Mike Fitzpatrick (SCA), Scott Baker-Smith (NovaEnt) and James Speed (Grant Broadcasters) The discussion centredaround how commercial stations can move “beyond the quotas” in their support for Australian artists including new opportunities opened up by digital for radio to expand this support and through following concerts.
 
The panel agreed that if a choice had to be made between adding a great song by an overseas artist like Taylor swift or an Australian one from, say, Amy Shark, the Aussie act would get the nod.
 
They also felt that the quality of Australian music had improved considerably over recent years.

 

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