This Boycott Changed American Music
by John Schneider - Radio World
on 05.04.2015
One of the strangest episodes in American radio took place in 1941, when
the major players of the radio industry joined together and boycotted
all music licensed by the American Society of Composers, Authors and
Publishers.
In the process, the move changed the face of American popular music.
ASCAP was created in 1914 by songwriters led by Victor Herbert. It took
on the task of enforcing the 1897 copyright law, which required that
anyone performing music for profit must have the consent of the
copyright owners. This was relatively easy in the days when all music
performance took place in theaters and other public venues; ASCAP simply
collected royalties from theater owners based on a percentage of their
box office sales. But the new radio industry created a problem for them
— there was no way to know the number of listeners.
This spawned two decades of haggling. Early broadcasters, led by Zenith
president and pioneer Chicago broadcaster Eugene F. MacDonald, formed
the National Association of Broadcasters in 1925 specifically to deal
with the music licensing problem. In 1932, ASCAP set a blanket annual
fee of 5 percent of a station’s advertising revenue. While burdensome on
the radio industry, which continually fought for better terms, this
became the recognized formula throughout the 1930s.
Everything fell apart in 1940, when ASCAP announced it would triple its
music fees for radio. Broadcasters vehemently opposed this, arguing that
the exposure the music industry received via the radio helped popularize
new music and boosted sales, but ASCAP refused to back down. An impasse
had been reached, and drastic action was needed.
In September of that year, industry leaders met at the NAB convention in
San Francisco and decided on a drastic move to demonstrate the influence
of radio on popular music — beginning Jan. 1, 1941, most radio stations
and all the networks would boycott ASCAP music. That meant that,
virtually overnight, more than 1 million ASCAP tunes disappeared from
America’s airwaves.
In 1939, broadcasters and the NAB had established Broadcast Music Inc.
as the radio industry’s own music-licensing agency, and $1.5 million had
been set aside to create new music compositions for broadcasting. BMI
actively sought out new composers who weren’t already contracted to
ASCAP and released their music to stations at a much more favorable
rate. These were mostly third-rate tunes penned by unknown composers.
When the boycott happened, there wasn’t enough BMI music to meet the need.
To fill their airwaves, broadcasters turned to other sources of music.
They played songs from the public domain, such as familiar melodies
derived from classical works, and old American standards like “I Dream
of Jeanne with the Light Brown Hair.” (Time Magazine said that song was
played so much that Jeanne’s hair turned grey.) And they performed
foreign music that wasn’t licensed by ASCAP, especially Latin American
standards like “Perfidia” and “The Breeze and I.” Still another source
of new music were the “hillbilly” and “race” tunes that ASCAP considered
beneath its dignity to license.
AFTERSHOCKS
Radio’s ASCAP boycott had far-reaching implications. Most radio programs
in the 1940s had opening theme songs, and many of these were controlled
by ASCAP. This meant that Jack Benny couldn’t play “Love in Bloom” on
his violin, and George Burns and Gracie Allen couldn’t use their theme
“Love Nest,” which had been written by ASCAP co-founder George M. Cohan.
Instead, substitute theme songs were found, and some astute program
producers had avoided the problem completely by choosing public domain
theme songs, such as the Lone Ranger’s “William Tell Overture” and the
Green Hornet’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
The boycott also affected the record industry, because recording artists
knew their releases of ASCAP tunes couldn’t be heard on the radio. Some
popular bandleaders responded by recording swing versions of public
domain songs, such as Glenn Miller’s “American Patrol” and “Song of the
Volga Boatmen.”
Coinciding with the start of the radio boycott, the Department of
Justice began investigating all the parties — ASCAP, BMI and the
broadcast networks — for criminal monopolistic practices. This was
resolved in February when ASCAP voluntarily signed a consent decree,
agreeing to offer broadcasters both blanket and per-piece licenses.
However, several more months of negotiations went by before all parties
could agree on the rates to be charged. By the end of summer, ASCAP had
signed an agreement with NBC for 2.75 percent of net time sales on
network broadcasts and 2.25 percent for local station programs — less
than half of what it had been getting before 1940.
NEW EXPOSURE
The boycott officially ended in October 1941, and America’s popular
music returned to the airwaves.
But something had changed in those 10 months — American listeners had
been exposed to new music genres, and they liked what they heard.
“Hillbillly” music quickly morphed into the more refined “western”
genre, which became immensely popular on radio throughout the forties,
eventually leading to today’s country music. “Race” music became rhythm
and blues, which then merged with jazz to become rock and roll. Latin
rhythms and dances like the rumba and the mambo became national sensations.
In short, radio had demonstrated its tremendous ability to shape popular
music tastes.
Unfortunately, with time, broadcasters lost control of their own
creation, BMI, and it has become a functional clone of ASCAP. Once
again, the radio industry is battling with the music industry — this
time over performance royalties.
In radio’s golden era, most broadcast music was performed live, and so
the artists were paid for each performance. In fact, the American
Federation of Musicians exercised its own substantial power to keep most
recorded music off the airwaves. Of course, today almost no live music
is heard on the air. And so the debate rages as to whether radio should
pay performance royalties, and the radio industry still argues that its
influence over popular music creates a symbiotic relationship.
With today’s greater diversity of music delivery methods, some people
wonder if a radio music boycott could ever have the same impact today as
it did in 1941.
- See more at:
http://www.radioworld.com/article/this-boycott-changed-american-music/275788#sthash.cr31AKtX.dpuf
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Duane Whittingham - N9SSN
(ARES/RACES, EmComm, Skywarn & Red Cross)
(Melrose Park Public Safety & Homeland Security)
http://www.mpdes.org
http://www.radiodude.info
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