Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories

Taylor Swift caps her royalties from digital radio

This is a Marketplace.org Reader


While Pandora is sweating royalty rates, Taylor Swift’s label, Big Machine, signed a new deal with Clear Channel that will pay artists including Swift and other country stars like Tim McGraw and Reba McEntire for radio play on Clear Channel’s terrestrial radio stations. The tradeoff: the artists will cap the amount they get paid from songs that get played on Clear Channel’s digital stations, including its iHeart Radio service.

From the Associated Press:

“Performers and their record labels are allowed by law to take a mandatory minimum payment per play online, which equates to a fraction of a penny per listen. But the growth of online listening on mobile devices and in cars is outstripping stations’ ability to sell online ads.”

You guys, if Internet takes off, you’re in the dust. If it doesn’t, nice work!

Here’s another kick for traditional radio: Ford has now added a music streaming app to its SYNC system. Mog.

From CNET:

“Unique to this Mog implementation will be some degree of voice control. Although drivers will not be able to request aspecific artist through voice, they will be able to request the Top Songs and Favorites playlists, as well as choosing to play songs downloaded from Mog to their phones. Probably the most useful feature for customization will be the ability to mark any currently playing song as a Favorite, saving it to the Favorites playlist.”

Radio. It’s old-timey!