Website client musicFIRST is back in the news, most recently in Billboard and Politico, owing to the bold new website Section 101 helped them to launch as a response to the site for the tech-supported MIC Coalition.

Benefitting from an unclaimed URL, musicFirst is behind https://miccoalition.org, a parody website highlighting what they believe to be unfair practices toward musicians who are not paid equitably for their work via radio and digital royalties, due in no small part to the work of the MIC Coalition.

MIC, which stands for music.innovation.consumersm, says via their original website that they want to “ensure that consumers and consumer-serving businesses, such as retailers, restaurants and hotels, have continued access to play music at affordable prices.”

The musicFIRST parody site looks just like the original, but MIC now stands for Moneymakers Ignoring Creators, with their manifesto claiming “The truth is, we’re an anti-artist coalition of radio tycoons, tech giants and some of the biggest and wealthiest corporations (and the special interest groups they fund) who are committed to using our considerable lobbying power to reduce payments to artists and musicians.”

It has been a tough few months for MIC, who lost two important supporters this summer when both Amazon and National Public Radio withdrew from the coalition.  At the same time, musicFIRST has been focusing their efforts on the Fair Play for Fair Pay Act, which requires fair pay on all types of radio, ending the FM Radio loophole that allows them to play artists’ music without their permission and without having to pay, and stops digital services’ refusal to pay artists for airplay for music made before 1972.