To the editor: As a radio programmer with more than 50 years of experience, and knowing that guest contributor Gene Simmons is not uninformed, I found his opinions to be incomplete at best (“Radio should be required to pay performers for their music,” Jan. 30).
The key fact that he failed to be completely open about is that he, and other performing artists who are also songwriters, are already among those who receive a royalty from radio via the music publishing rights companies such as ASCAP and BMI — an arrangement that precedes my personal history in the industry by more than two decades. Simmons receives those royalty payments every time anyone (be it his band or another artist) performs a song on the radio that he at least co-wrote.
In fact, two of the best-known KISS songs, “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “Shout It Out Loud,” show his name as the songwriter, and several more songs by his band also carry his authorship imprint. If that sounds like he is making an argument here for “double dipping,” I cannot disagree with that perception.
Further, the up-and-coming artists who he purports to be worried about also, in overwhelming proportions, tend to write or co-write their own material and receive the same songwriting credits. And the streaming services that he admits many now use to discover new music are already subject to performance royalties, as he has himself acknowledged.
Those same alternative platforms have decreased radio listening, resulting in the profit margins for stations being much lower than when I started in the business. Give us yet another mandated fee to pay, and the result will be counter to the intent: More stations will drop music formats in favor of royalty-free spoken-word formats. Is that what he wants?
K.M. Richards, Van Nuys
This writer is program director for the syndicated radio format the Eighties Channel, whose flagship station is KRKE in Albuquerque.
