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Internet Radio Day of Silence
headless_ringmaster writes "TechTV's ScreenSavers today aired their interview with Wolf FM's Steve Wolf on the CARP bill and how it'll destroy Internet Radio. The Internet Radio Day of Silence is a day of protest for Internet Radio stations to get the word out on the issue. This has been talked about on /. before, but it's very nice to see a significant television/media company like TechTV use their broadcasting advantage to help the little guys, especially when they're up against monied interests." May 1 is Labor Day throughout most of the world except the U.S.; a good choice for internet radio stations to try to get out their message.
The Internet Radio Day of Silence is a day of protest for Internet Radio stations to get the word out on the issue.
Wait, you get the word out with silence? :) </lameness>
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
I'm a first posting moron and I have not been following this fight.
Can you please explain what the situation is?
Listen to your favorite radio stations on May-Day. For a VERY long time the DeeJays could not say the words "may day" together such as "Its may-day." Thats a fall back to those old radio days, - where you have to have station recognition every so often, etc. Who knows - but get on the radio waves tomorrow and just yell "ITS MAY-DAY! MAY-DAY!"
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
damn 20 secs
That the lawmakers HEAR the silence....
Hooray, hooray, the first of May.
Outdoor fucking starts today.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
That my radio decided to break tonight. So guess
my place will be a Radio Day of Silence.
Basically, it's good to see mainstream coverage for this story.
Net Radio Fears Heard in Congress
Yahoo writeup showing that we just might make a difference.
USAToday Coverage!!! Suave!!!
Most importantly, A sample letter to your congressman.
Of course, all courtesy of SOMAFM, my favorite internet radio group.
My fave is Groove Salad (128k pls feed)
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
but you can't hear what I have to say about it.
In fact, it will be observing a number of days of silence... quite a number so far.
BTW: Props to michael for the Simon & Garfunkel reference too.
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
people want to be paid for there copyright works!
NOOO Say it's not so!
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
The article says that radio broadcasters will be charged on a per listener per song basis. Is this how normal radio stations are charged? If not, it seems a bit unfair. Hell, even if they are charged that way, it's pretty tough to estimate how many listeners their are to a normal station anyway.
Seems like the same logical fallicy in "per-click" advertising payment models.
--
So they're going to show those morons behind the bribes that are behind the bill who's boss by ceasing broadcasts for the day...that'll show 'em!
Actually...since this stupid bill will make payments retroactive, a day of silence could save these internet radio companies quite a bit of money!!! Even better though, it could end up eventually costing the RIAA a little bit of money...and that's better than it costing them nothing...
From what I understand, according to this bill/law/whatever, you're supposed to pay a fee o RIAA for the songs you're playing PER listener. Which makes up for a killer amount of money if you look at stations like DIGITALLY IMPORTED. What I don't understand is, are you supposed to pay a fee to RIAA, even though you're playing music from INDEPENDENT LABELS ONLY ?
I'm asking this because I've been vising the homepages of some internet radio stations that do not depend on RIAA as the "content provider" of their music, but rather play music created by indepandant artists. Yet, all of them seem to be worried about this law. Anyone cares to elaborate ?
This one-day blackout will probably be as successful as the Great Slashdot Blackout.
A good history of the May 1st Labor Day and why it takes place in September for those of us in the states is here. I hope this day of silence brings attention to the CARP bill and copyright stupidity in general.
Recently in my school newspaper, there was an article detailing how laws such as the DMCA and other copyright "protection" laws have been making our campus radio station doubt whether it can continue it's online broadcast. We were informed that we would need to buy new hardware and software to monitor what songs were being played and how often, as well as how frequentlty they were aired. They also said that due to certain legislation we would not be able to play whole albums on the air, or multiple songs by the same artist. All in all it was said that we would need to pay back fees (royalties? i'm not sure) somewhere to the tune of $4000, just to keep our internet broadcast up.
i don't know about you, but i think this is a bunch of crap and is limiting the expression of our student body as well as keeping us from using new technology. (being that we're a well known Tech/ Engineering school, you might expect us to do stuff like this.)
oh well thats just my 2 cents.
"We've decided to postpone the day of silence indefinately"
"You mean the bill went through, don't you?"
"Potato-Patato"
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Shouldn't that be/> :-)
i could understand some sort of logical fee arrangement but they are asking internet broadcaster to pay double the rate of terrestrial based radio stations.
i would imagine if they tried to charge these fees of thoose land based stations there would be a huge fit (and many of them out of business shortly)... but since it's the internet the RIAA has to be "tough"
If it's as successful as the /. Blackout of a week ago, there's no telling the havoc that will ensue!
...There's also The Enemy.
This site is replete with RIAA whining about the fact that webcasters are "orchestrating a campaign of misinformation" about the fees. There's also proposed fees themselves and the RIAA's rebuttal to common arguments made in letters to editors...
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Save Internet Radio is a great website, there's lots of information on the bills that are threatening internet radio, and what you can do to help stop them from passing legislation.
Mod me down!
Hopefully this will be more successful than the Slashdot blackout.
so i guess ill be doing my part
admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design
That is the problem with this proposal. AM or FM only Radio stations don't pay this fee.
AM or FM Radio stations that also simulcast on the Internet will pay 0.07 cents per song per listener.
Internet only radio pays twice that fee.
That may not sound like much but do the math. Wolffm will owe $500,000 as soon as this goes into effect. The rate is retroactive.
Netradio liquidated as soon as they heard about this proposal.
This was pushed by the big companies trying to make sure you hear the music in which they have an investment.
Now... how gives a fuck about Internet radio. Isn't that just a waste of bandwidth?
Internet broadcasters stations should be subject to the same royalties and restrictions as any other broadcaster. At lest those that are not from the FCC, since no public airwaves are used here. If a radio station has to pay $1000 for an album to be able to play it any time they want in a public forum, then Inet broadcasters should have the same fee.
I think artists/performers/producers do have a right to control their artistic and intellectual property. I don't think the politicians should keep passing bad laws based on information gleened from over-paid lobbyests.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
T(H)GIRB
The (Hopefully) Great Internet Radio Blackout
The statutory royalty rate for Internet simulcasts of FM radio broadcasts is only half that of Internet-only broadcasts. So couldn't any web station cut their royalties in half by spending $34.95 (plus shipping) to buy a micro-FM transmitter? Why not?
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
It's spelt CRAP ... CRAP ... not CARP.
As General Manager of a small college radio station, here in Binghamton, NY I know a lot of people outside of our listening area depend on our RealAudio feed to get alternative news, music, and opinions. While it might piss them off that we're participating in the Internet Radio Day of Silence, it might make them angry enough to get involved. We have cut our feed and will be running Public Service Announcements on the air to get the word out. It's unfortunate that if CARP's decision goes through, we'll have to pull our Internet Feed. Small stations like ours (broadcast or just Internet) can't afford the high royalties. We already pay ASCAP and BMI, shouldn't that be enough!?
[shameless plug]
Don't let that stop you from tuning in *after* May 1st though!!
[/shameless plug]
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I wonder how long it will be before the dinosaurs' (RIAA and NAB) abusive grasping for control at all costs will attract the asteroid that wipes it out?
.4 cents per song that they "sought". They asked for that much and hoped for half that because they knew that even one-half of what they asked for would crush the upstart industry.
I can only hope that it is soon so that the mice (developers of new media and distribution technologies) can attain their rightful ascendancy.
Internet radio threatens the monopoly of the National Association of Broadcasters because no FCC license is required for IP-casting. After all, there is no "common property" (spectrum) occupied when the broadcaster has to pay for the bandwidth it consumes.
Internet radio also threatens the monopoly position of the RIAA because IP-casters can provide airtime to anyone who can provide them an MP3. Indie music can live large on the 'net and the labels DON'T like that one little bit. This may be the motivation for the extortionate royalties awarded by the CRAP^H^H^HARP.
Despite what the article says, the RIAA knew that they had exactly ZERO chance of getting the
A new entertainment industry segment has been temporarily destroyed by the entrenched powers. I say temporarily because, given the quality of the music being pushed^H^H^H^H^H^Hpromoted by the RIAA, it won't be long before the ranks of the indies include everyone worth listening to.
Starve the dinosaurs, support IP-casting!
utter rubbish
why?
Why didn't this topic have This picture? It would've been more appropriete.
We all know how well the 'silence' strategy works!
;-)
Sorry guys,
From http://www.saveinternetradio.org/pressroom.asp
HISTORICAL NOTE : Over-the-air radio stations have historically had to pay royalties to composers (in total, about 3% of revenues, via ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC), but not to the record companies or artists, as Congress felt that those parties benefitted sufficiently from the promotional value of radio airplay.
They will not pay this fee. If they did then payments to the RIAA from broadcasters would total $3.3 BILLION and this is even ignoring ignoring overnight.
It's May 1. And, SomaFM is still broadcasting.
I don't know if they're supporting the Day of Silence, but every 30 minutes, a short advertisement comes on the air. It always says something to effect of "The RIAA is trying to exercise its control over internet radio. Stop them before you can't hear your favourite artists, again." And, the ad is right. Forcing fees on already underfunded radio stations is terrible for the future of music.
Some of the lesser-known ambient music artists, for example, *ONLY* have their music played on SomaFM. What happens when SomaFM can't afford to keep their station anymore? I call it a tragedy. Call it whatever you want. Either way, it sucks. For us and for them.
Groove Salad.
I don't see the difference between the two that would justify such a gap in the royalty fees. How can FM be seen as promotionally benificial to record companies, but Internet Radio isn't? What's the freaking difference? Are they worried about people recording the streams? Umm..have these people ever heard of tape players? Seems to me the average person would know how to tape off their stereos much easier than figuring out how to record the stream off of realplayer or winamp.
20 members of the House, sent a letter last week to Librarian James H. Billington, who's approval is ultimately necessary to begin charging the fees CARP recommended.
n de x.asp
http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/042302/i
My friends, please make note if any of these members of the house represent your state, and please remember this the next time you vote.
Oh yeah, vote dammit!
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
isn't this what the CARP bill wants to do? Basically they are not making a stand they are folding. what I would do is maintain service but play ANYTHING THEY WANTED TO! or even better after the CARP bill shuts em down continue to play music even though they are shut down.
Tune in to SOMAfm.com
Listen to a few stations...
Look at the artist/song titles. Ever heard of them before? Probably not.
Betcha want more though, Hmm?
Ever hear stuff this good on a commercial (bland) station? If these guys get snuffed, you lose a wonderful channel for exposure. You'd never hear this great sound otherwise.
Nitin Sawhney, Leggo Beast, De Phazz, Solar House, Tosca, Electric Skychurch, Leftfield, the list goes on and on.
All great. All unknown to me before I tuned in
What's to keep mimes from capturing the music stream, burning mp3's of it, and then sharing it on KaZaA? Until we can eliminate piracy of silence, I seriously doubt we'll get the record industry to shut up.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Awhile back, some friends and I were lamenting the obscene amount of "power" that Diz-nee and co. have. One of us piped up "why don't we just set up a pirate teevee station, place the transmitter on Indian land?"
Could the govies/Disney pursue suit, should we be about six feet into Indian land and broadcasting Disney movies over free air?
Just curious.
(also, I could have SWORN that I saw said Screensavers interview a month ago)
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
I took the DNA Lounge webcast and archives down for the day, as well as the audio portion of the video webcast. Well actually I replaced it with a synthesized voice explaining why there's no music. If you run your own webcast, I hope you'll do something similar, to help shake the listeners into action.
I've written up an explanation of how the webcasting rules currently work, and how they will work if the CARP crap goes through. The whole situation is fairly egregious, and shafts the small operator far more than it will affect the major corporations who are able to play in the same sandbox as the Big Five who control 90%+ of the global entertainment industry.
This is all about legislating the internet out of existence, to preserve their previous and now-obsolete business model.
Under the new rules, if a webcast had only a single listener -- the webcaster -- he would be expected to pay $184/year for streaming music to himself!
What is the problem ? Why do slashdot users keep promoting commercial music and ignoring the free multimedia scene (scene.org) :-) ? Try scenemusic.net which has a playlist of 9095 free mp3s. You can actually download the
source code to most of the music (.mod, .xm etc.). Commercial netradios could also learn from it's advanced request and comment
system.
"May 1 is Labor Day throughout most of the world except the U.S"
... well everywhere actually since Labour Day.
And Europe, and Africa and
May 6th is Labour day.
why? http://www.w3c.org read up on XML holmes.
I'm not drunk, I'm just in touch with pi.
Internet radio killed the video stars!
Hundreds of Internet radio stations and channels across America are shutting off their music streams on Wednesday, May 1st
Hundreds of broadcasters, thousands of listeners. I wonder how much bandwidth this will "free up" for the day?
Screw the RIAA. All net radio stations should relocate to Canada. We're more wired than the US (per capita), business costs (including connectivity) are cheaper, and we don't give a rat's ass what big US record companies think. Just make sure to play a Canadian song every now and then and the government will love you all over.
The situation might benefit from a truly free-market solution. Content producers, copyright holders, etc., should be able to set whatever terms they like, which potential users, broadcasters, etc., could accept or reject. In practice, this would mean going through clearinghouse type organizations. Stations would pick the clearinghouses they wish to deal with.
The only real justification for the old system was the difficulties of detailed record-keeping in pre-computer era. Now that such fine points can be automated, there is no reason at all for governmental bodies to impose uniform fees and procedures on everyone.
By the way, I don't believe that "the free market" is a universal solution to every situation, I just think it would work well in this particular situation.
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
This rocks
I'm listening to the piece on TV right now. I like one particular quote "They say that we've got all these economic models that we're taking advantage of...What models? We're *losing* money on this...It's a labor of love."
As an aside...I would presume that the best way to do this isn't to simply shut off all the broadcasts, but to change out the playlists for a single looping track with an awareness message about CARP.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
this will even effect your clubs webcast? all your streams are from you own place right? its not like your a 'radio' station.
i find it hard that every place i hear music now is going to be charged some sort of fee.
next dial-a-song will be taxed/licensed
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
The same thing that keeps me from taping the local radio stations, burning mp3's of it, and sharing it on Kazaa.
Ban local radio!
Who's brilliant idea was it not to broadcast for a day in protest? Internet radio stations are up and down so much that no one is likely to even question why. It's not like a major TV station like CNN going offline for 24 hours. Most people are going to just move on to the next net radio station or pop in a CD.
What they SHOULD have done was to run a continuously looping 30-second spot telling everyone WHY their programming was interrupted and WHAT they wanted the listener to do.
Congrats, you just wasted a day of valuable broadcast time.
I set my Shoutcast internet radio station to play looped public service announcements all day. The PSAs heighten my listeners awareness by explaining the issue, how it affects them, how it affects me, and how they can take action. You can visit SaveInternetRadio.com for more information.
my sig is an honor student
I don't know about other companies, but the FM station I work for currently pays 2% of our gross income to the record labels in licensing fees for on air. Of course, only paying 2% doesn't give the RIAA the ability to drive us out of business, so it obviosly wouldn't be an acceptible agreement to the RIAA in this issue
(And yes, our internet streaming is down as well)
I don't think this is about legislating the internet out of existence. I think this is about controlling the internet. Clear Channel wants to control what gets played so they can keep their tidy little concert promotion monopoly in good working order, among other things. I think it's disgusting, and they should get slapped with lawsuits until there's nothing left of them but a lawyer in a windowless room.
-beme
1971
DI's MostlyClassical has it for example.
http://66.9.105.2:8400
Wolf FM 128k Stream
Wolf FM 56k Stream
Wolf FM 24k
Stream
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
But that's the thing.. a lot of the legitimate internet radio stations (like WolfFM mentioned in the headline) already pay the same royalty fees as any other broadcaster.. This fee is in addition to that, and it's only for internet broadcasters...
It's a little late to send a dead tree to your congressman, you'd better call... If you walk away with the distinct feeling of being shafted...
A friend of mine and I are thinking of setting up an internet radio station (well, maybe "station" is too strong... we're talking about doing a weekly show that may be rebroadcasted throughout the week, but the idea of doing something like 3-4 hours of music a night has been tossed around) and we were wondering how some stations, especially stations that are working with indepenedant artists, are doing things.
How do you guys work out the broadcast rights for songs from independant artists? Has anyone come up with a plan for handling those artists who become "successful" and sign a contract with a record label (in case said label comes to you and says "I don't care what you guys agreed on, you have to stop playing our artist's music")?
Jay (=
Just wanted to say thanks for bringing the day of silence to my attention. I have changed my usual radio format on Live365 from techno to silence. I have also included a few minute long, silent MP3s with various slogans on them such as "Save Internet Radio", etc... Hopefully this will help raise awareness as well.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Replying to my own post...
.14cents, that's 14 hundreths of a cent each time a song is played. An Internet only radio station playing 87,600 songs a year would only have to pay the minimum $500 licensing fee.
Apparantly the royalties are actually
I'm a little bit confused what everyone is bitching about.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Plus you forgot to multiply per listener.
So take that fee times the number of active streams. Then you get the correct number.
It really is hundredths (sp?) of a cent. Those fractions of a penny add up fast if you are streaming to hundreds of listeners.
That is just one of the reasons why this is so unfair and doomed to kill internet radio.
Web Radio and the RIAA news
...it'll be more than just a day of silence.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
I am writing this email to ask you to join twenty of your fellow Representatives in opposing the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel's recommendation for Internet radio stations. Rep. Boucher and nineteen others recently sent a letter to CARP expressing their displeasure with the plan. If the CARP recommendation is implemented, it will result in the elimination of hundreds of Internet radio stations because of outrageously high licesing fees. The ironic thing is that traditional radio stations don't have to pay any per-play fees. The CARP plan is targetted specifically at eliminating small and independent online stations.
As an example, one radio station, Radioparadise.com, says that the licensing fees would equate to $9,000/month, which is double the station's income! Not only that, the royalties are retroactive to October 1998. For a popular independent webcaster that has had, say, an average audience of 1,000 listeners (fewer than a single small-market broadcast radio station) for the past three years, the bill for retroactive royalties would be $525,600, or a retroactive royalty rate of 500% to 1000% of their gross revenues to date.
The CARP plan was lobbied by, of course, the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA's sole mission is to extort as much money as possile from honest citizens and to shut down any source of independent music. I urge you to take action and protect online radio. Thank you.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
So in this case, the RIAA's rates are over 1000 times ASCAP's for that sized internet radio station.
Not that I believe there's such a thing as good trance, mind you. I remember writing MODs back... christ. Close to 10 years ago and the whole "scene" back then. Ha ha.
I listen to music with production values and an understanding of how to do things past simple simon chordatic progression and I'm more than willing to pay for it.
I am a news photog in Nashville, TN, and we have done a few stories about all of the internet radio things with Steve, but admittedly, we (the news station) never knew about Steve until we did a story about what it is like to get around a city with a seeing eye dog. The he said (in his usual sly way that is very Steve once you meet him), "oh, by the way, I run the second largest internet radio station from my apartment." Well, as news people, we just couldn't pass that one up.
Needless to say, Steve is such a good conversationalist that we never really stuck to the subject with the eye dogs. We waffled about with internet radio and all sorts of other things. Eventually I made the story, but he really hooked us up on some interesting legislation and other things.
He's hilarious. You need to donate to Wolf FM for one real reason alone. In the few times I met Steve, I have no doubt that he will tell the regulators like Frank Zappa told the PMRC that they can go kiss it if they try to take away his small, slightly over break-even station.
Also, this legislation would probably take all of the pocket change that guys like Steve have to make internet radio. Therefore you get NO INDEPENDENT INTERNET RADIO REAL SOON. The song rights people are harassing them to get them out of the market, after they saw that XM did so well, and this is their next big thing. I'm betting they want subscription internet radio, and they think they can knock a few guys like Steve off of the air, and the market is basically theirs.
In other words, Tech TV got it right in interviewing him. He's a great mouthpiece for internet radio. He makes one good leader for the movement.
Please donate to Wolf FM. It gives us more Steve time, and I think this legislation is very, very important, because between the FCC and the corporates, there will be no independent radio anywhere.
Just what we need -- internet radio associated with communism. They couldn't have picked a worse time to do this.
which turns out to be:
Nothing about licenses in there. Nothing at all.
This isn't to say the royalty rates aren't obscene, just that it seems to me an interesting loophole exists.
Of course, IANAL. And I didn't do an exhaustive investigation. Do you have information to the contrary, where it says that only licensed broadcasters would recieve the reduced rate? If so, would you share it? Thanks.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
I sent in my letter to congress? Does this matter anymore? I'm going to cry when the RIAA steals my freshly chilled plate of groove salad.
KCRW is observing the silence, which should be VERY good publicity, since they are a VERY big market in LA (for a public radio station) and get pretty good ratings during drive time hours.
Here's the "To the Point" episode talking about it.
When i went to my favorite station: http://www.digitallyimported.com to listen at work.
Techno gets me coding like a nutcase and it keeps me from having to buy the shove-it-down-your-gullet crap the big label DJs produce on CDs. They want $15-$20 for those remixes and that just plain sucks ass. The whole alternative music genre started because we were sick of the crapy top 40.
I will never pay for D&B, house, progressive house, breakbeats, trance or any other mixed music unless it's $2-$5 for the cost of burning the CD to the DJ. If they take away digital radio I'll just get the mp3s. If they take away my internet I'll just go to raves with a tape recorder.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
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.
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.
How did you determine that it was 'significant'? Since you obviously aren't using 'viewership' in your definition.
For a non commerical station, assuming your math is right.
Where exactly is that money supposed to come from?
Pledges?
You'd pay $2200 a year to listen to a radio station 8 hours a day?
Let's be generous and assume you only listen 1/22 of the time, or a little over 20 minutes a day using your 8 hour a day station example. You'd still need to pay $100 just so the station could pay their music license. Not to mention bandwidth, staffing costs, etc.
And you'd have to have every single listener do so. Good luck on that one.
It's way out of line as a cost.
Many Internet stations already pay these fees to so that the composer will be compensated. This is the fee that AM/FM radio stations pay.
The CARP fee is for the Artist and RIAA. The AM/FM only broadcasters will not pay this fee. Once a broadcaster starts simulcasting on the Internet then they start paying the CARP fees.
This is what is unfair. Radio broadcasters don't pay the fee because getting played is enough compensation so that the stations don't have to pay a fee to the artist. If getting played is enough compensation on the Radio, why did RIAA lobby so hard to get this ball rolling?
They, the big media co.s, do not want to bankroll an artist with funding for studio time, video production, and all the other costs associated with big music production, and then have people listen to small homegrown groups on the Internet. Instead they want you to listen to the radio and hear the same old MOR crap. Classic payola is dead, but the relationship between most stations and the big producers is very incestous.
In my area Clear Channel productions owns nearly all the radio stations and two of the TV stations. I never hear any songs that aren't on the standard playlist.
www.halturnershow.com
May 1 is now labor day? Man, i knew Minnesota was in a weather time warp but damn...
Actually, like your cordless phone, the FM-10 broadcasts at powerlevels which don't require any license, not even the micro-licenses which have been proposed and defeated in recent years.
:)
By the way, PBS and NPR are two of the biggest opponents of micropower radio. If it weren't for their efforts, we might have 100- and 1000-watt stations licensed all over America right now. Because I help run a pirate station here in Minneapolis, I'm not pledging to either PBS or MPR until they change their stance on this, and I encourage others to do the same.
Which is too bad, because Frontier House r0x0rz.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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I can bet there will be a big increase in P2P usage when people stop webcasting due to the outragious fees. Considering the RIAA's greed, I doubth the webcasters will actully have any money after the retroactive fee. I bet the Recording Industry Ass. of AMERICA will be charging you these fees even if you never broadcasted any of their content, ie you only broadcast your own music, or you broadcast import lables. When its gone, people will move over to P2P, increasing the populartiy of another area the AA's frear.
What next, the RIAA tries to get money from a turnip?
Absolutely. It's all explained in my summary of the rules.
In order to have music performed (live, and DJ) in my club, I already pay ASCAP/BMI/etc thousands of dollars a year. On top of that, I pay them more thousands per year to simulcast that on the internet. I don't recall where the breakdown is, but the total of the two comes to around $7,000 per year.
If these new rules go through, then I'm going to owe an additional $7,000 per year, retroactive to when we started webcasting: and we've got just about the smallest scale webcasting operation as anyone has. Currently I only allow between 15 and 20 simultanious listeners! Double that number, double the fee.
And that's not counting the approximately $16,000/year I'm already paying just for bandwidth for these webcasts!
And I don't make a dime from my webcast. I don't sell banner ads, I don't have subscriptions, nothing like that. I do my internet simulcasts of what goes on inside the club because I think it's cool, no other reason. And it costs me a fucking fortune to do it. Now they say I should be paying twice as much, because of all the cash that's just rolling in.
Right.
Someone on IRC said, ``how do they expect the little guys to survive?'' I replied, ``No Mister Bond, I expect you to die.'' They're trying to legislate webcasting out of existence, because it stands in the way of their progress toward a completely pay-per-view economy.
It's very hard to justify spending this money to give away these webcasts. I look at it as basically letting people into the club for free: if people want to physically come into the nightclub, we charge them admission, but if they want to come to the club via the net, we don't charge them to listen to our music. But it's incredibly expensive for us to do that, and now they're saying I'm not paying nearly enough for the right to let people listen for free.
I am trying to run a business here, and we could really use that cash to pay for things like rent, and plumbers. I'm always trying to find ways to increase my number of simultanious listeners by getting bandwidth cheaper, and these new rules will remove any incentive to do that: if I find a way to get another few MBps for free, it's just going to increase my RIAA bill. Why should I try?
Current radio stations that pay the various fees to broadcast over the air would then have to pay additional fees to just to stream the audio of the Internet, in an effort "to curb piracy" or some shit. Basically, double pay for all audio unless it's original content such as talk radio (unless it is a syndicated show, then you still have to pay.)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
This proposal can be seen as yet another attempt by the RIAA to severely limit the distribution and marketing of their product. It's time for music distributors who are independant of the RIAA to put some high priority on recruiting new artists; this could be a big opportunity for someone to fill a void left by the industry's restrictions on the exposure of their artists. Who knows...
Yes, us quirky and backwards Americans don't celebrate Labor Day on 1 May. Heck, we're so barbaric that we don't even go out to do the normal Labor Day traditions like smashing storefronts and burning cars on our Labor Day. How we got to where we are today is a total enigma.
Very easy clear up that enigma: May 1 (worldwide) celebrates the Haymarket riots in Chicago in 1886. Workers struck on May 1 for the 8-hour work day, by May 3 Chicago police had fired into a group of strikers killing 6. Further disturbances in reaction followed on May 4, culminating in a bombing, more police shooting workers, and show trials, the details of which I leave out for brevity. By July 1889 the Second International had declared May 1 a day to commemorate the Haymarket events and to continue to demonstrate for worker's rights and better working conditions. Slightly before and contemporaneous to these events, a September-oriented Labor Day movement was started in New York City and spread to other major US cities. By 1889 the September date was enacted in a couple of states, Oregon among them I believe. Although workers in the US observed May 1 to some extent, the official recognition for a "Labor Day" in September had already gained momentum.
May 1 being "Loyalty Day" and later "Law Day" in the US are fairly clearly linked to anti-Communist sentiments at the time they were enacted.