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Hykker
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| Posted: 13 November 2008 at 8:59am | IP Logged
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torcan wrote:
I always wondered why some songs were edited in certain ways - I can understand them taking a 6-minute song and making it 4-minutes for radio play, but why take 5 seconds out here or 10 seconds out there, especially if the single isn't even remixed? (Air Supply's "All Out of Love" or Taylor Dayne's "Love will Lead You Back" are two examples of this). A few seconds chopped from the intro and the rest of the song is intact(?) I can't see the point.
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I'm not familiar with either of those edits (and haven't listened to either song in years), but I would guess that they were a creative decision to make a song flow better and/or sound tighter on-air.
Edited by Hykker on 13 November 2008 at 9:00am
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EdisonLite
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| Posted: 13 November 2008 at 10:29am | IP Logged
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<I thought I once heard that short versions were also a matter of money--that if a song ran longer than 5 minutes, the station had to pay more royalties to use it, which is why most songs were edited down to under 5 minutes. Is there any truth to that? >
As a songwriter who's had a song on CD that clocks in at 5:03, I can tell you that record labels do have to pay more money for a song over 5 minutes! However, as far as radio airplay for songs over 5 minutes - I don't know if radio stations have to pay more for that to ASCAP/BMI, or if ASCAP/BMI have to pay more to songwriters. My guess is no on both counts. I believe radio stations play a blanket fee (i.e. a standard flat fee) per year to ASCAP/BMI, and the amount may be based on their Arbitron ratings. Whether or not the year's worth of music includes a 5+ minute song and whether that really makes any difference in what they pay, I don't know. The fees paid are probably based on the radio stations' income, which directly ties in to their Arbitron ratings (i.e. the more listeners that a station has, the more they can charge for ads to air). The more I think about it, the stations don't pay on a song-by-song case, meaning a 5+ minute song doesn't mean anything to them one way or another, so it's doubtful radio stations would care to have a 5:10 or 4:10 version of the song - in terms of what they pay for airing music. They would care in the sense that they can squeeze more 4 minute songs in an hour than 5 minute songs, and that's something that the stations probably find appealing.
Edited by EdisonLite on 13 November 2008 at 10:35am
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Hykker
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| Posted: 13 November 2008 at 12:02pm | IP Logged
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EdisonLite wrote:
| The more I think about it, the stations don't pay on a song-by-song case, meaning a 5+ minute song doesn't mean anything to them one way or another, so it's doubtful radio stations would care to have a 5:10 or 4:10 version of the song - in terms of what they pay for airing music. |
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BMI does periodically require stations to submit aired logs...usually 3 days' worth once or twice a year (or at least this was the case in the smaller markets I've worked in). I don't think this affects the licensing fee as much as it gives a snapshot of what's getting played so royalties can be proportionately distributed to the publishers.
I have never had to send logs to either ASCAP or SESAC, I don't know how they handle it.
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