A little clarification

Just to be clarify something from my last post: the new royalty fees are entirely separate from the existing composer fees that both FM and internet radio stations already pay. It's as if telecommuters suddenly had to pay a hefty "employment tax" per hour worked on top of the income tax everybody pays.

The issue here is not compensation for the artists. The RIAA (or more accurately, the management of its member labels) could not give the least little crap for that, except in general terms as a way to impose for taxes, licenses, and fees. For example, these new royalties are based on song plays times listeners, but they don't directly go to the artist who created the song. Instead, the total collected royalties are distributed based on an artist's chart ranking. To paraphrase an internet radio engineer who posted on Digg, let's say 1000 people tune in to hear you play an Elliott Smith song last year, you now owe 80 cents, which goes primarily to Justin Timberlake's management. (But not primarily to Justin Timberlake.)