Radio is not making what it once was as more advertisers begin to realize that listeners are tuning out. So it doesn’t even matter if the radio is taxed additionally or not, as all it will do is perpetuate radio station bankruptcy.

Radio is a dying industry and a tired business model.

It’s not the radio station that made famous artists who they are, it’s the work of the labels. It’s the labels that played the song 12 times a day, ensuring that an artist will be given exposure.

It’s not radio that has sustained the careers of acts decades after their labels dropped them because they didn’t look 19 and didn’t thrust their chests out in a video.

It’s not college radio that endlessly hypes small groups from New York to Menomoniee to get the info out about new music. Those little non-profit stations deserve to fork out a significant portion of their budget because they helped promote the up and coming.

It’s not the labels, who will get even more cash from this scam if it passes, who make sure most artists will never see the majority of the money they earn. It’s not the labels that buy out the rights to musicians songs so they’ll never see a dime from their work in the ensuing decades.

It’s the radio station who helped ensure that an average artist gets less than a nickel when someone downloads their song on Itunes.

It’s not the artist who hears their song on the radio for the first time who is calling all of his friends. It’s the radio station that is humbled by the honor of playing an obscure band for the first time.

The RIAA is wrong, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Currently we have a win-win situation with the labels vs. radio. If the labels wish to extort more money out of stations - who are already paying for the music they play - we’ll see a tipping point. Unlike Aversa’s assertions, we won’t see stations begging the greasier musicians and RIAA to play their music. We’ll see them drop music formats all together. The bigger and greedier CC stations will find a way around this to survive — and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them cut deals with labels to get out of this. Others will either switch formats or simply go off the air. We saw it with small Internet radio, and we’ll see it with small stations.

Thankfully it looks like just enough Representatives have seen through the money grab. Don’t worry, I’m sure someone will attempt to hike up the fees on Internet Radio again in a few years. Remember, radio should be indebted to play the wonderful artists they helped create.