Warner Music Gets Another Subpoena in NY Probe (Music Ind/Radio)

[UpInArms]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=8115226

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Warner Music Group Corp. has received another subpoena from New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer as part of an industrywide probe of the financial relationship between music companies and radio stations, Warner Music said on Thursday.

The company, which is planning a $750 million initial public offering, said in a regulatory filing that it received a subpoena on March 31 as part of the probe, which includes a look at the use of independent promoters and accounting for payments to them.

The investigation is examining the time-honored practice of music companies' paying independent promoters hundreds of millions of dollars a year to help secure valuable radio air time for songs.

<snip>

It said it cannot predict the outcome of the investigation but that the probe has the potential to result in financial penalties or change the way the music industry promotes records.

...more...

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. I can tell you that...

This thing has real legs.

[Mizmoon]

2. I wish they'd come to a conculsion of some kind

because in the meantime the stations are playing every crusty old rock song that I've heard a million times before. "black dog" is great, but I can't listen to the same led zep tunes for my WHOLE LIFE!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. Those songs are the easy and safe ones.

Program and Music Directors know that they bear no real threat to them. On the other hand, this investigation is about how new music makes it to the airwaves and the amounts spent on the process.

I can tell you that the amounts are quite considerable and the process has gutted the industry of both talent and opportunity. Good people are leaving or have left the industry in droves. It has gone from a $US44 billion a year industry to approx. $US27 billion in a few short years. A lot of the reason for this is the vertical market integration by Clear Channel and its analogues. Some of this money being paid to them is the radio version of supermarket slotting fees. At least, that is how they see it.