Do radio stations have the permission to play songs not released as singles?

Question

Here in the philippines, Katharine Mcphee's Home was played on the radio a everyday, although it has not been released as a single yet... Can radio stations do that?

Answer 1

Yes.  The radio stations get promo cds.  Any song off the entire cd can be played.  That's why sometimes there are songs that are really popular in certain markets, but you don't see a video for them because they were never officially released as a single.

Answer 2

Yes they can but normally they have to pay a nominal fee to play them.

Answer 3

Yup,usually stations will recieve songs waaay in advance from the label or promoter. Or if they paid for it.  There used to be alot of issues w/ stations taking bootlegged stuff off the internet so they could say "you heard it first",  but since the FCC laid out some heavy fines that has pretty much stopped.  So now its back to business as usual for most parts,   stations are paying much closer attention to either following rules or breaking them in secret to avoid the fine.

Answer 4

In the US - yes, as long as they are current with the licensing organizations. They can play any published song they want because they pay "blanket" licensing fees to ASCAP/BMI and sometimes SESAC (usually for religious music).

These royalty fees (collected o behalf of the writers, composers and publishers - not the artists or record labels) are determined by how big and profitable a station is; how much music they play and what type among other things. Basically, if a station plays music, it pays the fees.

Sometimes a label will request that a station not play a certain song because they're not ready to "support" it. But the station is under no legal obligation to abstain if the song is published and available.

There's more to the story, but there's your short answer.

If you want to know more, see the below links.

-a guy named duh

Answer 5

Radio stations can play just about any song released to the public (as long as it is not indecent), if the playing of that song is documented so the artists involved will be credited for royalties.

Songs released as singles are songs record companies are heavily promoting as potential hits, but many times in the past DJ's have picked a track from a CD or LP and played it, and in time it became a hit due to popular appeal.