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Wierd, I listen to wolfFM.com and local talk radio over the internet everyday. Have done so for years.

Sam

It's all a tradeoff- If you shun commercial radio and music with significant promotion behind it (i.e. label music) and prefer to experiment and check out independent music you've never heard before, then it's your time and money that you're going to spend to separate the wheat from the chaff. Which do you think is worse, spending $15 on a chart-topping pop CD with 1 good song out of 10 on it, or spending $15 on ITMS or Audio Lunchbox and ending up with 1 song out of 15 you can stand listening to more than once? Don't forget that music taste is extremely subjective- there are tons of rappers with huge followings that I wouldn't buy or listen to in a million years. I personally am not willing to spend hours hunting around for great independent music; that's my choice and I'm not unhappy with my collection, pattern of expanding that collection, or listening habits. (fortunately there are still plenty of free and legal methods of hearing an entire song before buying it, even if what you're looking for is pretty esoteric (and I'm not talking about Kazaa)).

I agree that "nobody" is not a good term to use here, but off-label music is not a vast utopia of excellent tunes ripe for the picking either.

WOLF FM just launched an oldies radio station on January 1 called Howlin Oldies.

Coincidence?

I would personaly go with the one that started caeeying internet radio staions such as www.wolffm.com

As far as comercials, you PAY for cable and satalite tv but you still get them there.

As far as Clearchannel, all the channels they run In Florida are running on HIT loops. Its like a 20 song mp3 player on repeat.

That's why I usually only listen to NPR or CDs while I'm in my car. I can't stand the horribly limited playlists of the radio stations any more.
Not to mention the 20+ minutes of ads (not including the DJ's yapping away) in every hour of music.
And from what I've heard, Clear Channel can be a rough company to work for. The corp HQ selects the playlists and the DJ doesn't get to choose very many songs to play, unless they're working after 9:30 or 10:00 pm (and who's listening then anyways?)
When I'm at work, I listen to Wolf FM. They've got some ads, but the ratio of music to ads is very high.

Fact: The per song per listener fee for every song an internet radio station plays is 0.14 cents.

Fact: The RIAA is seeking 3 year's retroactive payments from each broadcasting radio station.

Now let's do the math for my personal favorite internet radio station Digitally Imported. Currently they peak at around 6000 listeners, so let's assume an average of 5000 listeners for a 24 hour period. Given the fact that the mainly play trance/house/eurodance music let's also assume that they can play about 6 songs per hour (at the extreme end of the lengths of said tracks). The total cost to the RIAA per year to run this station follows:


total_fee = (number of listeners)(proposed fee)(songs per hour)(8760 hours per year)

total_fee = (5000 listeners)($0.0014)(6 songs)(8760) = $367,920!!!


Furthermore, take into account the retroactive payments. Assuming the station even started at 0 listeners 3 years ago and grew in a linear fashion (Gaining 1667 listeners per year) the total retroactive payments come to:

retro_fee = ($73.58)(1667) + ($73.58)(3333) + ($73.58)(5000) = $735,800!!!


As far as I know, almost all independant broadcasters cannot even afford the yearly fees, let alone this outrageous yearly fee. It's simple math that can't be argued with. When the guy who ran Digitally Imported needed donations to upgrade the server that streamed the music, he was lucky to receive $3,000 over 3 weeks.

For the love of God, at least charge a lower rate or go to a profit percentage method of payment. Most webasters that I know of have no problem with these proposals, but they have been constantly rejected by the CARP commission.

To cover these yearly costs if the stationed turned to a subscription-based system, that would require the listeners to pay $80.00 a year to listen to something that is basically being offered for free as a labor of love by the creator. Now consider that FM radio is free. That would drive more listeners to the crappy cookie-cutter top-10 wasteland that is FM brodcast radio. Whose thumb is held very prominently over this media outlet? The RIAA. Is it any wonder now why they're pushing for such high fees? Drive out the internet radio stations, drive more listeners to their crappy stations, possibly boost their revenue. It's important that we think about these issues when they arrise as the big ten of the media are basically trying to dictate to us what we should and should not be able to use to entertain ourselves. So please, speak out. Raise your voice. Be heard. Thank you for listening to my thoughts on this subject.

For more information on this subject please tune into WolfFM. They are holding an excellent all-day live information broadcast on the topic at hand.

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I don't know about SomaFM, but there is another really great radio station called Wolf FM that stands to be wiped from the planet if CARP goes through.

In brief, Wolf FM is a commercial radio station. They play ads and sell ads for their online radio. However, as Steve Wolf (the owner of Wolf FM and quite an incredible man) says running the service costs thousands of dollars per month *just* for the bandwidth. That's not even counting licensing fees.

It's so bad in fact Wolf FM has resorted to asking for donations because companies are not advertising on online radio, even though the response rate per impression is exponentially higher than regular broadcast radio.

This is quite serious for the growing and quite large community of Internet radio. Most broadcasters either use donated bandwidth or take the burden on themselves as a hobby, continually seeing a loss at the expense of operating a world-wide station.

These stations can't live on compliments alone. They are in jeopardy everyday just because of the costs associated with delivering the content. What CARP would do is turn the Internet radio community into exactly what they are trying to prevent - the domain of pirates.

Let's face it, when something costs more than it's actually worth, is in high demand, and is controlled by one source who doesn't bend to the rule of supply and demand, people will resort to other ways of getting it. Suddenly the lines between fair use and illegal copying get blurred, and this is how an industry fails -- or worse, consumer rights get taken away and further restricted (read: the DMCA).

If CARP gets passed, we will see an influx of pirate and distributed services like the many p2p file sharing services. The reputable and legal online stations won't be able to survive and hence they will not be paying their broadcasting dues to organizations like BMI and ASCPI, who actually have moderate pricing that allows online broadcasters to exist.

So the effect of all this will be the artists and distributors loosing money, while creating a brand new pirate industry.

It's sad really, because there is a lot of talent in online radio today and it would be a shame if it all up and vanished, which is what will happen if CARP gets its way.