BBC Radio Abroad

One evening last week, having woken up earlier and, as usual, turned on the Jeremy Vine show (with guest host), I turned, again, to BBC Sounds to find… nothing. They’ve been threatening to turn it off for non-UK listeners for months, pretty much without explanation, and telling users that there is an exciting new and utterly inferior service in which you can just stream Radio 4 and the World Service live. I texted my friend to say it had finally happened, and she said “I know. I immediately deleted the app in anger. Rude”. In fact, it turns out that Radio 2 is available to stream, but this not communicated, let’s say, clearly.

Now to be clear: neither she nor I believe we are entitled to listen for free to radio funded by the UK taxpayer. Being able to listen to pretty much everything whenever I want to has been a huge benefit, for which I would pay a quite large subscription – I’d welcome the ability to do that. But: why have they chosen to withdraw the service rather than to introduce a subscription model? And, for that matter, why don’t they explain why they have withdrawn it and that streaming is still available?

The second question turns out to have an answer. I’ll include a long quote from James Cridland explaining this in detail below the fold. But here’s the short version: the reason they are turning it off is that they are afraid of having to pay worldwide music rights, and they are worried that explaining what they are doing will trigger them having to pay those rights in arrears. And because, in fact, they are continuing to stream the music stations they fear that telling people too clearly how to find them will count as marketing, and thus will trigger having to pay music rights for those streams.

But this leaves me with the first question. The music shows are great but they are essentially ephemeral — I wouldn’t pay a sub for them. By contrast the BBC has a massive archive of spoken word radio that, while intended to be ephemeral is in fact literature that will last forever. It broadcasts this archive on a station called Radio 4 Extra, and most of Radio 4 Extra is (in the UK — it used to be abroad as well) available on demand for a month or so afterwards. As Cridland explains, Radio 4 Extra will still be streamed, but with no catch up, and is not one of the two stations that the BBC makes available through its new (pretty terrible) app. That’s what I, and my friend, would pay our subscription for. And there can’t, surely, be rights issues for 95% of that produce – the BBC (in one of its two forms, see Cridland below) must have worldwide rights forever to obscure thrillers written by Francis Durbridge wannabes in August 1954, no? That output is not affected by the music rights problem (I assume), and could safely be put on catch up (Evidence: good news is that apparently catch up for Radio 4 will be re-introduced in a few weeks).

If anyone with insider knowledge can answer my first question please do, anonymously if necessary. And, any other comments welcome!

Here’s Cridland in full:

Although it doesn’t look like it, the BBC is really two different companies these days – the public service broadcaster for the UK, which is paid-for by the licence fee, and a commercial company tasked with earning revenue for the BBC everywhere else, called BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide).
BBC Sounds was paid-for by the public service broadcaster and really only intended for the UK; but, more importantly, the music rights for radio stations like Radio 2 or Radio 6 Music were also only negotiated for the UK. It costs hundreds of pounds in music rights to play a single record on Radio 2 – but that money only covers music rights in the UK, and not overseas.

The generally accepted rules for music radio’s payment of international music rights are that if your radio station a) is not marketed in a country other than yours, and b) you don’t earn revenue from that country, then you aren’t liable for additional music rights in that country. On the South Coast of England, you can often get radio stations from France – but because they’re not marketed to UK listeners, nor earning money from them, they have no music fees to pay for the UK.

In 2017, TuneIn lost a landmark court ruling, and lost again in the Court of Appeal in 2021. That clarified the law that since TuneIn was marketing radio stations to a new country, and earning money from them, they were liable for music rights payments in that country.

This is clearly something that BBC Studios doesn’t want. Paying for music rights worldwide is prohibitively expensive; and also there’s no guarantee that the terms would be the same, thus causing issues for the domestic broadcasts. (As one example – US music licensing contracts require that you can’t broadcast more than four tracks from the same artist in a three hour period. There’s no such rule in the UK.) That contract also requires accurate reports, both of songs played but also exact listener numbers – something which could add significant work.

It’s easier for BBC Studios to give access to BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service (two stations they own effectively all the rights for), where they are free to monetise these by using ad banners, audio advertising and even subscription.

Why aren’t they communicating all this?

A few reasons – first, perhaps one of legal liability (they probably don’t want 25 years of music rights payments), and also because if they do communicate too clearly how to find BBC domestic music radio, then they could be claimed as marketing those stations, and therefore have to pay the music rights fees.
The BBC is, in short, delicately tiptoeing through this issue. It would be easy for them to turn off BBC music radio entirely overseas. It’s lucky for us that they aren’t doing that.