It was announced yesterday that Dallas/Fort Worth's alternative rock station KDGE 102.1 The Edge would be ceasing operations and moving to 97.1 The Eagle. During the FM station's transition, Semisonic's 1998 hit "Closing Time" has been put on a continuous loop with a brief message from Radio Voiceover Guy explaining the move. The choice in music, which is a little too on the nose in my opinion, got my friends and I wondering about the royalties for the song being played so much.
I put in the minimal work effort to find out how much an artist gets paid for their song being played on the radio, and it turns out that it isn't that much. Keep in mind that I have no idea how accurate the following calculations will be because I don't really care enough to put forth the effort to research the true amount a person gets from having their song played on the radio. With that caveat, let's proceed.
Apparently when a song is played on the radio, and I'm not counting Pandora or other streaming services as being in that group, the writer of the song and the publisher receive approximately 12 cents from a major market station, which KDGE would fall under. College stations get away with only paying half that amount. So of that 12 cents, the writer and publisher have to split it.
Dan Wilson, lead singer for Semisonic, composed "Closing Time," therefore he would be eligible for the six cents per play that The Edge is shilling for its transition. I'm not entirely sure when the station decided to put "Closing Time" on a loop, but it will end today at 5:30 p.m. Assuming it started at 5:30 p.m. yesterday, that is a full 24 hours of "Closing Time."
The album version, which is the rendition being heard today, lasts 4:33. Including the quick explanation that The Edge is moving to The Eagle, the entire time it takes for "Closing Time" to play and the next rendition of "Closing Time" to begin is approximately five minutes flat. If you multiply that out by 24 hours you get 480 times of hearing "Closing Time," which in my estimation is more than enough for one lifetime.
Having to play "Closing Time" 480 times at 12 cents a pop would cost the station $57.60. Half of that goes to Semisonic for writing the song. So either Dan Wilson gets $28.80 alone for writing the song or the three band members each get $9.60, depending on the agreement the band had when it came to song writing.
I guess if you are a "glass is half empty" kind of person you would say, "Wow, only 30 bucks for an entire day's worth of song playing. Really?" But if you are a "glass half full" person, then it would be, "That's $30 I didn't have before and I didn't do anything at this moment to earn it." Sure, they took the time in 1998 to write out the song and polish it up for radio play, but nearly 20 years later you aren't doing anything at all to earn that money.
On a side note, did anyone know that the lead singer of Semisonic was the Grammy-award winning guy behind Adele's 21? I certainly didn't.
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