Music industry groups slam broadcasters in supercommittee letter

In a letter to the deficit-reduction committee, four music industry groups took a shot at the National Association of Broadcasters for resisting incentive spectrum auctions.

Broadcasters and the music industry have a long-running feud over whether artists should receive royalties when radio stations play their songs. In the letter, the heads of the American Federation of Musicians, the Recording Academy, SoundExchange and the Music Managers Forum wrote that they “strongly support” empowering the Federal Communications Commission to hold incentive auctions of spectrum currently used by television broadcasters. The auctions would raise billions of dollars in revenue for deficit reduction and free up spectrum for wireless broadband devices. The program would be voluntary, and the government would split some of the revenue with the participating stations.