As a note Sin, Radio station DJ's have the station itself paying the royalties, as metioned above about 2$ per song per play.
Piracy hurts sales more then it helps, for an independant, they have the option to allow people to distribute their song for free, and the copyright law people hate allows them to rotate this music freely while at the same time disallows other popel to make money playing that music.
And this law will come to the US, the RIAA is very effective at lobbying, and it's really for the better int he end.
and ont he why pay for what was free...
USed to be you could hunt deer here for free, now you must pay for a liscen or be fined heavily, nothing is set in stone (except some fossils
)