Just heard on my local fm station about a performance tax congress is trying to put into law. Every song that a radio station plays will have a tax paid on it, that will go to the record companies, most of which are overseas anyways. This will bankrupt most radio stations. How long before this will turn into a tax being paid by every musician or bar band on every song he performs?

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Life is like a sh*t sandwich. The more bread you have, the less sh*t you have to eat.

Geez, wouldn't that be just great...

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Hey, Boy Blue is back!

What's next are they going to look to tax the air we breathe. Well lets just hope this insanity gets knocked down.

I just heard about this too, what a crock.

The lyrics to "Taxman" seem more accurate all the time.

The way I understand the laws -- In order to legally play copyrighted music you must have the consent of the copyright holder which can be the record company, the writer/composer or other. It really doesn't matter if your selling it or not. (other than just playing it at home, or at a friends house ie: not in public)

If your playing it in a venue, the venue has already (if they are legal) paid an annual fee which covers your public performance of the song(s).

MySpace prohibits the uploading of copyrighted material. You can be subject to both civil and criminal charges. Practically speaking the worst thing that's likely to happen is that you would lose your MySpace account and your ip addy banned.

YouTube use to be a gray area, however now they are really cracking down. Google, the parent company of YouTube, has negotiated royalty payments with most of the organizations world wide which oversee copyright enforcement. Technically you still need permission. Currently, YouTube monitors content and only pulls material when requested by the copyright holder but it's happening quite frequently lately.

There are always the folks that will dispute the above, ("I've been doing it for years,"... " I know sites that have it up there right now" etc etc.) but that's simply because they have not been caught, yet.

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

Many state and local governments are so desperate for income that they'll try anything. That's especially true in places like California where normal revenue from taxes (business and employee), tourism and "balance of trade" with other states and countries is way down.

For example, the "stay-cation" (a word that needs to be retired in 2010!) brought about an uptick in people wanting to visit and camp in state parks. No one flying off to exotic locales was a boon that the legislature was not going to overlook for long. So here and there all sorts of new fees have been proposed. And the kicker: the governor has proposed selling off state parks to private interests to get cash now.

Fees are popular these days (in Cali and elsewhere) because they often circumvent tax limits in many states. Can I charge you more taxes for snow removal -- probably not because your property may be maxed out at the highest rate they can take. But how about a new municipal services fee to cover situations when snow does or "might" exceed a certain level. Of course, the citizens would be "protected" because the legislature or chief executive would have to review and declare any such state of emergency, but ...

... you can bet there'd be ample fuzzy language. A mayor or council might almost get away with declaring a "might happen" snow emergency on the hottest day of August and assessing the fee.

So-called sin taxes are always popular but in many states, the levels are already so high that even opponents of the vice in question have joined in and said "no more." Again here in CA, a recent attempt to raise cigarette taxes to an insane level had even opponents saying it would backfire and accomplish nothing. Labeled a "health care" tax, the ruse was soon exposed -- only a small fraction (about 12%) of the added tax would go to any kind of health care (mostly education programs, not real care) and the rest would have meandered into the general fund.

So what's left -- voluntary activities other than vices I guess. You don't have to go to a club, so let's slap on a new entertainment venue fee -- as they've already done with some parks and other attractions. They've even talked about taxing all grocery items here and elsewhere (hasn't happened yet, but just wait). Then there's the national sales tax originally proposed as an alternative to the income tax. Now some say they should pass it as a sort of "Internet tax" to share with the states to compensate for lost sales taxes due to on line purchases.

Let's start no rumors -- there will not be an Internet tax now or probably ever. Congress finally got the message -- it would be virtually impossible to impose. Many state legislatures have considered one too again with the same wall of practicality. Others have considered stricter and more effective cooperation between states' sales tax people. Trust me on this one ... that's unlikely. So I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a Fed sales tax on Internet purchases, something that would be much more realistic to enforce than some abstract tax.

Our tax rates are still lower than quite a few other countries but they're getting up there. The question 20 years from now may more be what are we getting for such a high tax rate when compared to those other countries.

When governments start charging radio stations to play songs then its time to buy a boat and antenna and start a second age of pirate radio.

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Rated "M" for meaty.

this isnt very surprising to me actually.... EVERY democracy in history has destroyed itself with little to no outside influence.... and it usually happens by the government of said democracy becoming more and more desperate for cash, so they raise taxes, and then the people revolt because of said taxes.... like i said, EVERY democracy in history has self destructed like this.... hopefully we'll will recover from this little money issue before something like that happens

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Favorite bands:

Melvins
The Jesus Lizard
Cows
Big Business
R***man
Minutemen
Flight
Minor Threat
Big Black
Shellac
Karp
Scratch Acid
Wipers
Pixies

Philip-Great post. Yes, the question will be what are we getting for what we are taxed? In countries with higher taxes, they tend to blow the money on themselves, transit, medical etc. We, Cali especially, will be paying more just to flatline, stay in the same place. Well, except for the proposed cap and trade. That will have to be covered, too.

Poor California. So hostile to business and development, and so friendly
to programs. It has over 30% of the US welfare cases.

Something has got to give!!!

I'm in AZ now, but I still listen to KFI when I'm home during the day. Los Angeles is hoping to eliminate ALL free parking. That is you will have to pay to park in front of your own home. Not sure if this is county wide or just the city, but, wow....

Phoenix is looking into taxing food purchases in grocery stores as well.
The welfare cases are to be exempt, of course.....

A government is going to impose a tax and give the money to private companies? Now I know which companies to look for work with while times are tough!

If the radio stations pay the tax I guess they'll put up their advertising rates. So advertisers will want more for their dollar. Will listeners put up with more advertising or will they turn off? If they turn off and radio stations start doing it tough, who can they lobby to get some of that tax revenue to prop them up?

Governments always try to impose too much tax and only change their minds when enough voters speak up. So speak up!

on a somewhat related note- has anybody else noted what happened in the online guitar tab world recently? some great sites shut down under fear of litigation. apparently it is illegal for you to show someone how to play a song!

watch out- the next time you write some chords out for a friend, you may be breaking the law

They'll never take me alive!

well in the words of Zack de la Rocha...... LIGHTS OUT! GUERILLA RADIO! turn that $#!% up! LIGHTS OUT! GUERILLA RADIO! turn that $#!% up!

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Favorite bands:

Melvins
The Jesus Lizard
Cows
Big Business
R***man
Minutemen
Flight
Minor Threat
Big Black
Shellac
Karp
Scratch Acid
Wipers
Pixies

This rumor doesn't make sense to me. Don't commercial radio stations already pay a royalty fee to ASCAP and/or BMI for airing their music? This would be paying the recording industry twice for the same thing, wouldn't it‽

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I really like all them "Aster" guitars. You know, like the Stratoc, Telec and Jazzm.

Roger that He asked the question that first came to my mind on hearing the news and reading Mike's observation as well. The key to this is who sponsored the legislation and why. I happen to know that there is something similar afoot with respect to product counterfeiting and the major interested party is in tight with a US Senator who is sponsoring the legislation. There may a marker being called in on thisperformance tax and it would behove those likely to be adversely affected by same to look deeply into it's inception.

Doc

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"Another day in paradise!"