Most people hate MTV because it doesn't play much music anymore. This is a strange reason to dislike the network, NBC hasn't played a music video in quite a while either. The Superbowl halftime show was a knock against the network, but to be blunt, the recent cult of nipple rage was small potatoes. Recently MTV has made political moves that should legitimately anger everyone who isn't a media conglomerate, and no, not just by using Toby Keith in their youth voting campaign. The pop culture juggernaut has begun intimidating European independent labels to try to cut their royalties in half.
MTV networks in Europe have threatened to pull videos from independent labels, including The White Stripes and Craig David, if the labels don't resign their contract with the network for a 55 percent decrease. While indies make up more than a fifth of the European music market, MTV makes up a significantly larger cut of the music video market.
Video negotiations are regularly held through the collective bargaining group Video Performance Limited, which rejected MTV's recent, more slender offer to renew their contract with the labels. After VPL turned them down, MTV began to contact labels directly, completely bypassing the bargaining process.
MTV's old deal was not a boon to indie labels. Craig David's label Telestar told Britain's Guardian that they were only receiving around $1,900 a year for countless hours of Craig David-based entertainment, currently in high demand in Europe. While the old deal was worth $3.5 million yearly to be split among thousands of indie labels, the new deal cuts that to $1.6 million.
MTV's offices in New York declined to comment on the actions of their overseas counterparts, and will not be cutting their payoffs to indie labels in America.
What type of precedent is set by a music broadcaster that reduces the rate of payouts to musicians when it has effective control of the airwaves in a region as large as Europe? Viacom, parent of MTV, is also the parent of Infinity Radio, who with Clear Channel and a few others control most of your AM and FM dial.
Unlike with movies, the only viable advertisement for an album is to have songs played on mediums like television or radio, and for years it was handled through radio alone. Radio stations dealt with each of three American publishing companies: the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Broadcast Music and the Society of European Stage Authors & Composers. With only three, uniform rates were insured. But nothing insures that a company like MTV deals fairly with the labels it does business with.
Why stop at reducing payouts? Why not charge indie labels to appear along with the bigs? MTV has figured out it has the only bargaining chip. Indie labels, the ones who need MTV the most, are at their every whim. And if anything is to be gained by mass exposure to bands not signed by major labels, if anything was gained by the making hundreds of thousands of Britons into happy White Stripes fans, it will be gone soon.
-Joe Uchill just got stood up. Give him a comforting hug at jhuchill@wisc.edu
