Radio (NAB) To Record Industry (RIAA): You, Sir, Are the Ball-Licker!

What's worse for artists, corporate radio or corporate record labels? Radio is saying labels this week. See, the record labels want more dough from the broadcasting industry, but the broadcasters are bigger and meaner, and play dirtier. So when Congress asked them why they can't chip in more radio dough to artists, NAB simply said:

From the BetaNews:

"I would put that back as a responsibility of the record labels. Why have the record labels allowed that to happen with artists that have helped make them as successful as they are today? [Why is it] the responsibility of the broadcasters to cover, I would say in some cases, the misdeeds of the record labels?"

This kind of logic is backed by statements from the new owner of EMI, Britain's largest music group, From the Telegraph UK:

Guy Hands, the financier whose private equity group, Terra Firma, bought EMI in August, told staff in a confidential e-mail last week that "The recorded music industry... has for too long been dependent on how many CDs can be sold," he wrote. "Rather than embracing digitalisation and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, the industry has stuck its head in the sand. ...

Hands is understood to have been surprised at the size of salaries paid
to second-tier executives. On Friday he warned that unless there was a major cultural change, more established bands could follow Radiohead's lead, choosing to cut the label out of the loop and distribute their music directly to consumers.

"Why should they subsidise their label's new talent roster – or for that matter their record company's excessive expenditures and advances?" asks Hands.

So, SF, who do you think is worse?