Unlicensed Radio - not so naughty after all.

Royalty Free Music Radio - good for bands, good for business.

Monday 17th August 2009

The buzz-box is humming and the hamsters are at work; the fingers are moist and clammy to the touch, and it would appear, as I write, that even the most errant and slapdash reporting can, at times, feature a degree of continuity and cohesion.  Indeed, as you press your wet little snouts up against the glass, and peer curiously upon the strange (yet informative) text that is the beginnning of this article, you may even realise it yourself.

This, it gives me great pleasure to announce, is a Follow-Up Article, and one that is, I hope, not entirely bereft of all merit so far.

Anyway, a little over a month ago, I wrote an article entitled P.R.S Radio Licensing - Daylight Robbery?  It's easy to find, because frankly I haven't done a great deal since, but then, we ain't the Washington Post. 

Now, if you'll remember, I was busy belly-aching about the P.R.S cracking down on the license fees needed to play a radio set in the workplace.  The problem was that I found it all slightly fishy - at the time, a number of well-meaning MPs were suggesting the novel idea of easing up the laws on live music performance, and the good old P.R.S stood to be considerably out of pocket.  So rather than go back to stealing lunch money from the canteen queue, the P.R.S bigwigs took action of a different kind.  Workplaces up and down the country were told to pay up, or switch off the radios.  Failure to comply would result in pain, brutality and sin.

As a result of the measures they were taking (hounding folks like dogs into the night, electrolysis, etc etc), the poor 9-5 citizen lost the very thing that made most work bearable.  Music.

However, it would seem that while the bile was spewing forth, and my spleen was thus a-venting, forces inconceivably greater than my own were already at work, chipping away at the cliff-face of dullitude, and offering up hope to the common employee.  I give you Royalty Free Music Radio.

Playing music from unsigned sources only, R.F.M.R are not only giving otherwise unheard-of musicians a chance to air (ha!) their work in public, but have found a way to bring radio back to the workplace legally.  The principle is simple - if a band/artists volunteers their work for airplay, and if there are no contracts or obligations to record companies etc, then no royalty fees are charged to anyone.  So, if a radio station play nothing other than volunteered music, in theory, no P.R.S licence is required to play the station to any amount of people.  As the station is reachable online (www.rfmradio.co.uk), you need not even own a radio set.

The amount of tracks offered up by hopeful musicians is a heartening indication of the growing popularity R.F.M.R are enjoying.  A vetting system is in place to ensure that only the best music gets scheduled, but even so it is already a 24-hr service.

I'm inclined to go along with it, at least for now.  With their hearts in the right place, only time will tell if they, like so many others, will be crushed by the might of the Bugglywug Police.  Until then, it might be worth telling your manager or supervisor about Royalty Free Music Radio, or, if you're a  musician yourself, why not throw a few tracks their way? 

In the Land of the Enforced Silence, it might just be the making of you.

 

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