Pirated Music Helps Terrestrial Radio

From The Wall Street Journal - Record labels and artists might think they're going to recoup some of the revenue lost to music piracy thanks to higher online royalty rates, but Web radio may die in the wake of a recent court decision. And piracy isn't going away, either.

It's still the music industry bugaboo, but terrestrial radio giant Clear Channel Communications has a new outlook on music piracy. The company's Premiere Radio Networks unit has begun marketing data on music piracy to help radio stations shape their playlists. It's a great idea, because it gives stations' an idea about what's popular with 18-34s, regardless of the fact that its data about illegal activity.

Premiere's data comes from the file-sharing research firm BigChampagne. Premiere takes BigChampagne's data and markets it to radio companies and stations for a fee. The market research firm would not disclose how much they charge, but they've signed up more than 100 stations so far. Joe Fleischer, BigChampagne's vice president for sales and marketing, says the legality of grabbing music is a separate issue from the insight into peoples' taste. The data is also far easier to collect than the industry standard "call-out" research, in which people are asked to listen to clips of songs and rate them. | Read full article