Your Favorite Radio Hits May Go Silent

Jon Bon Jovi got his big break in the early 1980s after spending an entire day waiting to pester a disc jockey at a radio station on Long Island, N.Y., to play a demo of a song he’d written. The album with that song, Runaway, went on to sell more than 1 million copies and helped fuel the career of one of the most enduring rock artists of the past four decades. Now, Bon Jovi is again lobbying radio officials, and this time the impact could be far larger. He and about 75 other artists—including such staples of the airwaves as Drake, Pharrell Williams, Steve Miller, and Bruce Springsteen—have joined supermanager Irving Azoff’s crusade to press radio stations to boost the royalties they pay writers when they play their songs. That figure hasn’t budged in decades, and Azoff says artists may pull some of their music off the air if their concerns aren’t addressed.

“This isn’t about the guy in my position, but about my buddies who are very good songwriters who try to make a living just songwriting,” says Bon Jovi, whose latest tour grossed more than $40 million this year. “Who will champion them? There is no charity show for the songwriter.”