While it'd be nice to be able to redefine words to suit what you think they should mean, the fact is that playing a song being broadcast on public radio is never going to be a performance. Nobody is performing it. It is a broadcast, plain and simple, and if it's on a public radio station it has already been paid for. This reminds me of the time I ran a university society for rock/alternative music. We had weekly gatherings at a local pub, where they had a jukebox full of rock music - so the licence had already been paid for the music on that. The pub was warned by the PRS that people were not allowed to dance to the music, otherwise they'd need to apply for a new, more expensive licence to play 'live' music, even though no live music was being played. This behaviour of double-dipping is what's causing the backlash against the rights collection agencies and people seeking other means of obtaining music. It's completely unreasonable behaviour and a lot of consumers are tired of it.

Speaking as both a producer and a consumer of music, I would rather have more people listening to my music. That's the best promotion I can get. I'm under no illusions that I'll make real money from selling my music, and that doesn't bother me. I like making music and will continue to do some regardless of how successful it is. But the more people who hear my music, the more my market increases and the greater amount of people will at least consider coming to my shows. That's good for me. Now, I'm aware not every other musician/writer/producer shares my opinions, and that's fine. But to expect to be paid over and over again for one piece of work, perpetually? It's unreasonable. Take for example people like Cliff Richards, who's been lobbying for copyright protection in the UK to be extended even further just so he can still get paid for the recordings he made in the 50's. This is absolutely insane to me. Even with patents, this kind of entitlement doesn't exist perpetually. Eventually they run out and then other people are free to use them. Copyright was brought about to give the artist a limited period in which they have a monopoly on the work. After that, it's assimilated into society. Extending copyrights ad infinitum will stagnate music to the point where it's going nowhere, and that's what's happening right now with commercial music. When it stagnates, then everyone loses out, big musicians and small musicians alike.

As I said in my previous post, I'm not against copyright, but I do think it needs massive reform. Besides, I would argue against having music playing over the radio in a store as the store utilizing the songs, especially in the case of the original article where the radio was being used by employees. It's the radio that are utilizing the songs, and as I've said repeatedly, they have already paid for that right.

You brought up piracy. Think of it this way: people still want to listen to it, but they are not prepared to pay the price being asked for it. There are two ways to look at this situation: the first is the recording industry's mindset that "These people are freeloaders who don't want to pay for anything and are criminals". The second is "people still want music, but there's something wrong with with how we're offering it to them because they're not accepting the terms. What can we do to change this so that we can continue to earn money from music and provide people with what they want?". I'd rather think in terms of the latter. Because, you see, there are plenty of people who are still willing to pay for music, a sizeable amount. You can compete with free when you offer people incentives that they actually want to pay for. For me, I like to pay knowing that I'm directly helping the band I like (I have long ago stopped buying music released by the big record labels, because unless the artist is one of the lucky few, they won't see any of my money when I buy their music -- I've known too many bands and seen too many contracts with labels to still be naive enough to believe that part of my money will go to the band). For others, they like to pay because they're getting a limited edition of something with loads of collectable items that mean something to them as a music fan. But no, the music industry has been too slow in adapting and instead of looking ahead, they're desperately trying to wring as much money out of a dying model as possible.

As for those artists signed under the big labels: they agreed to sign their rights away. That's tough, but it was their choice. There's no guarantees a business model will work forever, it's utterly unenforceable and to believe otherwise is just misguided. So now, as I see it, there are three choices open to artists:

1. Fight what's happening by kicking and screaming. In the end you'll lose because people's attitudes to music have already changed. There's no fighting that. You can increase the prices for licenses/impose new grades of licenses to try and recover the money you're 'losing' by squeezing the customers who have stood by you. That'll just result in you driving your remaining customers away. You can make downloading/sharing/copying music illegal and impose stricter and stricter punishments, but it's so widespread already that it'll be unenforceable.
2. Adapt, create more music under different terms that people are willing to pay for. That doesn't mean we throw out copyright law altogether, but as I've said before, it needs to be changed because right now it's overwhelmingly one-sided.
3. Find another job.

I know which option I'm going for.

Not, it's not their fault. Nor is it mine that more and more people are no longer willing to 'rent' the ability to listen to music. As I said in another post, I'm more than happy for producers to be rewarded for broadcast/performance of their work within a set period, but I think that the period is way too long, and also that we need to redefine what constitutes a performance. Having a song playing over the radio is not a performance to my mind.

But the problem is more and more people are not willing to meet the terms music is licensed under anymore, so I would argue it is unsustainable in its current form. Sure, the terms were reasonable once, but the recording industry has pushed and pushed until it's really not fair to the consumer any more.

I agree with a lot of the points you made. However, I think there's a certain sense of entitlement from many artists today which needs to be dispelled. If you want to treat music as a business, fine, but then you need to treat it like any other business. It's a service which is sold according to what people are willing to pay for. If people aren't willing to pay for it any longer, find something new to sell or find another business. They're the rules for every other form of commerce.

I agree, it's very difficult to calculate the value of a song up front, so I'm all for keeping copyrights and having royalties paid to artists for a limited amount of time. However, the current limits to copyright are, in my mind, excessive and have been imposed not by artists but by the recording industry in general who hold onto these rights as a sort of cash cow. I've been involved with bands both in Britain and in Belgium, and from my experience very few signed bands, even if they're moderately successful, make any kind of money from their record contracts. Royalties are collected centrally and then distributed according to the percentage of plays the recording companies think their artists are getting, or think they should be getting. It's a mass of cross-subsidies, so very few artists/performers/writers are paid fairly.

Now, I agree that while royalties are important to an artist's ongoing work, this double-dipping that the royalty collection agencies are currently trying on is inexcusable. Radio stations already pay a licence to play music, so no matter where it is heard, that music has already been paid for. The simple fact that it's reaching more than one person's ears is irrelevant.

I'm a musician too (albeit not a professional one), and I think it ludicrous to expect to be paid in perpetuity for one piece of work created. As many others have replied, music on the radio is already licensed and songwriters/producers/artists are already compensated by their various royalty collection bodies.

If you're not getting enough money from your work, find another job. As a software engineer, I'm not paid every time code I wrote 2 years ago is used. Builders aren't paid every time a building they've worked on is sold or let. The current practice of rewarding artists every time their music is played is unsustainable, and more and more people are becoming aware of this fact.