NY AG Eliot "Ness" Spitzer has landed another fish. Having reached settlements with the four major music companies, he's pressing charges against radio groups for soliciting and accepting payola. This week Entercom Communications agreed to adopt strict new compliance policies and pay $4.25 million to "put the investigation behind it." The company admitted no wrong doing, but do they ever?
There's a lot to debate about these cases, about Spitzer, about the public airwaves. But I'm interested in how the damages, if that's what they are, are divided. In this case, according to the AP, $750K goes to the state of NY to cover the cost of the investigation and prosecution. The rest, $3.5 million, goes to a music education and appreciation fund. What's that? Who runs it? What does it do? In theory I'm in favor of public spending on the arts, especially music education. But is New York State benefitting from Spitzer's raids?
As it happens...
... just before Christmas, the body in charge of the money, the New York State Music Fund, announced its second round of grants, totalling $9.2 million. According to a release from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the money went to a variety of applicants:
Awards to the 218 grantees represent every region of New York State and range from $10,000 to $500,000. Diverse forms of popular or experimental music, including indie rock, salsa, electronic, fusion and reggae account for almost 37 percent of grants and more than 15 percent celebrate a spectrum of jazz; nearly 25 percent include new classical music. The state’s ethnic or racial minority communities are served by close to a third of all programs, while 28 percent specifically target rural communities. The Fund’s size and emphasis on music of our time in all its forms set it apart from other arts grant programs.
These included The Boys Club of Harlem, a literary center in Buffalo, and a public broadcasting show called "Back Stage Pass." Besides grants for music exposure and involvement by young people, the Music Fund also has a mandate to give to entities that "address the music field’s ability to monitor and maintain an open and fair marketplace." That includes, it turns out, the Future of Music Coalition, which got $250,000 "to inform New York State musicians and citizens through statewide forums and Internet resources about key arts and media policy issues related to supporting an open and fair marketplace for creativity and cultural diversity such as payola, media consolidation, copyright, and emerging technologies." Also up, and more exciting, is $400,000 for the fabulous WFMU in New Jersey/New York to develop and maintain an online repository of copyright free music tracks with artistic and historical value.
The only problem I have with all of this is that while the payola problem is national, the settlement works almost exclusively to the benefit of New York. It's unclear whether the parties settled with only the impact on New York in mind, and if so, is Spitzer suggesting that states around the nation pick up his torch and drive their own suits against radio and records? Think I'll download some music from WFMU and listen while I ponder that one.
This fund is allowing the Staten Island Bluegrass Festival, which had a ten-year run before the host organization could no longer help fund it (and had to skip 2006), to be resurrected for this summer. This festival had a decade-long run of bringing top-notch bluegrass acts (Rhonda Vincent, the Osborne Brothers, etc.) to Staten Island (the most inaccessible borough of NYC) as well as providing a stage for local and regional bluegrass bands. For some, it was the once-a-year chance to see this sort of entertainment. The announcement last year that the festival would end was met with dismay by many (and charges that the host venue was only concentrating on the short-term bottom line and not the long-term cultural benefits). The festival will be held -- it's 11th year (but no longer "consecutive") -- this August thanks to a grant from this fund.
Tina
www.jamesreams.com
Posted by: Tina Aridas | January 25, 2007 at 04:16 AM