FMC + Musicians vs FCC on Net Neutrality

Our friends at the Future of Music Coalition rounded up a star list of songwriters, performers, and independent artists try and get the FCC to back off its plans to wreck net neutrality. Kevin Erickson was kind enough to send me a link to the collected artists' comments, which you can read online at the FMC site.

My favorite pull quote from the comment filing:

We music people know payola when we see it. And what we see in Chairman Wheeler’s proposal doesn't give us any confidence that we won’t end up with an Internet where pay-by-play rules the day. We've heard this song before, and we’re frankly pretty tired of it.

Thousands of us have already told the FCC that losing an open Internet would be disastrous to the music community, and we suppose there's no harm in telling you again. But this time, we really hope you'll listen. We may not be telecom lawyers, but we get this issue pretty clearly. You have the legal authority to prevent discrimination and paid prioritization online. You only need to exercise it.

It's been a long time since I wrote about how payola came to the digital music landscape. Doesn't mean the problem has gone away, though.