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Accord­ing to CNET, Billy Cor­gan (of Smash­ing Pump­kins fame) went in front of Con­gress to argue against the exemp­tion that allows ter­res­trial radio broad­cast­ers to only pay song­writ­ers and pub­lish­ers, but not artists, for the right to play their music. Satel­lite and inter­net broad­cast­ers by com­par­i­son must pay all three.

I’m 100% in favor of mak­ing things even between the three radio medi­ums, as it’s absurd that ter­res­trial broad­cast radio is treated as some­thing spe­cial, but I think it should go in the other direc­tion. Rather than rais­ing the rates paid by ter­res­trial broad­cast­ers to equal those paid by satel­lite and inter­net broad­cast, I believe the lat­ter two should have their rates low­ered to match ter­res­trial. Some sta­tions are simul­cast on all three (Clear Chan­nel has a part­ner­ship with XM satel­lite radio and is also push­ing their inter­net stream­ing heav­ily now with their “iheartra­dio” iPhone app) with three dif­fer­ent rates apply­ing. Wouldn’t it make more sense over­all to just have one sim­ple charge based on num­ber of lis­ten­ers? This charge should be much less than it is now, as the radio is sec­ond only to word of mouth for how peo­ple find new bands.

Radio is a dying medium as it is thanks to satel­lite (which isn’t doing too hot right now either), stream­ing, and MP3 play­ers. We don’t need to make it worse.