Record Labels Make Hint-Laden Mixtape for NAB

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mojo-photo-cassette.jpgAh, it brings me back to my early teens. With the image of an unrequited crush object fixed firmly in my mind, I’d labor for hours at my crappy Sears stereo, arranging song after song onto a C-90 cassette, in the hopes that the music would carry a message I was too chicken to voice myself: The Smiths “I Want the One I Can’t Have,” The Cure’s “Close to Me,” Violent Femmes “Add It Up.” A master of subtlety I was not. Then, the magic cassette (complete with intricately detailed cover) would be handed off to said crush object, who I can only assume listened to it for hours while longingly gazing at a picture of me. Or, tossed it in the trash.

Either way, it never really worked, but that isn’t stopping record label-funded musicFirst, who are trying to express their unrequited love of performance royalties to the National Association of Broadcasters with lyrically appropriate music this week. Cheekily calling the attempt a “four-day prank,” the organization is sending NAB president David Rehr an iTunes certificate for these songs:

Tuesday: Steve Miller Band – “Take the Money and Run”
Wednesday: Bruce Springsteen “Pay Me My Money Down”
Thursday: Paul McCartney – “Back in the U.S.S.R.”
Friday: Sheryl Crow – “A Change Would Do You Good”

Instead of just letting the music speak for itself, though, musicFirst has added helpful explanations to their tracklisting, letting us know in a press release that “Take the Money and Run” should “help remind corporate radio that, in the spirit of Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue, it is running off with property without fairly compensating the artists.” Okay, okay, we get it.

If you’re confused, radio has long paid songwriting royalties to ASCAP and BMI, but not performance royalties, claiming the publicity of playing the music is payment enough. Digital broadcasters (i.e., satellite and webcasters) do pay these royalties, and record labels have been fighting to get broadcast radio in on the deal for a while. However, one wonders where they think radio stations are going to get the cash, with radio revenue down 5% this quarter. Ah, dinosaurs: how fun it is to watch them fight themselves into extinction.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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