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The New Webcasting Compromise
arkham6 writes "According to a story on Yahoo, it appears that the RIAA and negotiators for webcasters have reached a tentative deal for reduced rates for 'small' webcasters. However, it appears now that the artists themselves are going to jump into the fray because the record companies now may be able to weasel out of paying the artists."
"...the record companies now may be able to weasel out of paying the artists." Next thing ya know microsoft will be able to kill off businesses in other countries that piss it off by, I don't know, selling mod chips? Oh, and the MPAA will get legistlation passed that restricts user rights.
Artists and music pirates have long heralded the removal of the middleman from the music business. This paradigm shift will in effect allow the record companies to make more money and the artist the same amount. Until the artists have a method of promotion that does not require a record label they will always receive the short end of the stick. Maybe instead of $2million advances, a loan of $200,000 from a bank and some hardwork promoting your band as a day job, and playing at night for the band. Turn the band into your business and it might be successful. A few ands have taken that route and succeeded.
In Social Democratic Sweden
...record companies now may be able to weasel out of paying the artists
The artists, they think that just because they're the ones that work hard to create that music, they're entitled to some part of the profits. Shame on them! They should make their effort in order to to help the poor guys from Sony/BMG/EMI/... so they can make a living. With all these music terrorists around, it's really hard being a major label.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
The big concern right now is if record companies are going to hand out free sandwiches.
The RIAA agreed to something because they still want "their" money
Although artists rights groups appear to have no problem with a deal that helps small webcasters, a union official expressed concern about language that could allow the record companies to avoid paying artists their share of the royalty directly. The language seems to allow the recording industry to deduct the top expenses that they incur for setting up and maintaining the royalty payment regime.
"Direct payment is crucial, and if the recording industry gets deductibility language, we need direct payment," said one artists rights advocate familiar with the negotiations.
Obviously they have gone back to their old reliable first choice of people to mess with, just to make sure they get their middle man piece of the pie.
I want to make life size voodoo dolls of these folks.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
According to their site, SomaFM will resume broadcoast soon !! yay!
0.70$ per song per thousand listeners seems to be reasonable for small webcasters.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27474.html
They list some specifics that state if your revenues are less than 250k you have a specific rate' mhile 250k-500k is another tier.
Mhere exactly would non-profit orgs sit?
Whew, this Dvorak keyboard is killer on my spelling. ::grunt::
Quoth Yahoo news: The language seems to allow the recording industry to deduct the top expenses that they incur for setting up and maintaining the royalty payment regime.
They're trying to deduct their expenses for setting up the royalty payment system, not avoid paying artisis altogether.
Yeah, OK, it's still evil.
-These are not the sig your looking for.
Alright, Mr. Johnson, here's your check.
Um, excuse me, this is for Zero dollers and zero cents.
Well, 15% of NO REVENUE. Figure it out.
This is putting my plans for a small personal non-profit webstream back from underground to legal. Also, I know many radio stations who multi-cast and don't get any revenue from THEIR stremes who will get to stop pointing those "Listen Live" links to http://www.sos.dj
I never really did figure out if this affected every single broadcaster. My question is if this affects people webcasting music that has nothing to do with RIAA and its multitude of labels? If I recorded myself playing and webcasted that along with some recordings of friends of mine, would I have to pay them the webcasting fees?
This story was on The Screen Savers tonight. For those that don't know, it is the number 1 tech show. They interviewed Steve Wolf of Wolf-FM. Heres a link to the site they gave out: http://www.saveinternetradio.net/
remember that non-profits still make revenues just like private corporations. they are still charged by for-profit companies. they may not have to pay certain taxes to the government, but private corps can do all they want to non-profits.
but will they charge for webcasting this?
(warning, copyrighted material)
Do all the math you want the REAL stinger is the MINIMUM FEE!
$500 Minimum.
Even if you just play one song a year.
The $500 Minimum is what will kill Most small broadcasters.
Bleh. Af course they are referring to revenues, not profits! Ha. I knew it was too late to be posting.
Of course...
And i will start to place in my invoice an item called "invoice payment/receivals system" and all my clients will have to pay it!
Good luck... if you keep any custommer... hmmm... slave...
They're trying to deduct their expenses for setting up the royalty payment system, not avoid paying artisis altogether.
I'm sure the recording industry uses the same accountants as the MPAA member companies. The same accountants that figured out that Coming to America, Titanic, and hundreds of other movies never made a profit.
Hey, if these guys would get together with Enron's accountants, who declared they always made a profit, perhaps the truth would finally emerge???
The artists will never see a dime of this money.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Did he ever admit that his model relied on abnormal data? I've seen nothing that shows that he re-ran any of his financial models. A good researcher admits when a data source is retroactively found to be inaccurate- the librarian is so far not acting as such. He needs to redo his calculations based on multiple data sources.
if you arent a big guy your a small fry. at least thats what i always say but anyway i heard the whole in the ozone layer is getting smaller. thats good.
This makes me more than a little sick. Whenever they appear before Congress or talk to a journalist, the RIAA only talks about "The Artists" {rights, livelihood, right to compensation, insentive, ...} but the second the royalty pickings get a little too slim for the studio's tastes, the artsists are the first ones to take the pay cut.
The worst thing about charging to webcast low quality audio is that noone charges physical radio stations except for the liscence to broadcast over FM/AM/etc. no matter what you do, you are screwed over by someone.
Sig: I stole this sig.
We listen to online freeform radio from the USA every day. They have realtime updated playlists. Its simple to find information about the music being played, by a simple right click. We can then check out the t-shirts and CDs.
There should be no charge for streaming online from non commercial entities. Period. Anyone can start a station, and see thier trafic explode if they play good sets. This new tax will dampen down or cap the potential size of audiences, which for independent labels will be a very bad thing.
Anyway, how are they goning to police this?
Streaming is no different to file sharing; its just copying a very long number. There cannot be one law for streaming and no law for P2P filesharing; there should be the same unrestrictive constitutional guarantees for both.
Copyright is Haram. This means that you can put a server in a sharia country, securely tunnel into it and then stream from there. Unfortunately the cost of doing this wont be worth the hassle, much less the threat of having charges to a company in Iran showing up on your credit card bill!
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
It seems likely that the whole broadcast/record industry was a fleeting phenomenon. Why not just give up on charging for recordings altogether? Between charging for live performances (bring your digital recorder if you like), government sponsorship, private foundations, and donations, we should be able to get more than enough of a thriving musical and artistic culture. That's how music and art were paid for before the 20th century.
Or, in different words, if the choice comes down to Britney Spears or civil liberties, I'll choose civil liberties, thank you very much.
The rates are, IIRC, 10% of revenues or 7% of expenses, whichever is greater. Non-profit orgs will still pay the 7% of expenses; not sure how "revenue" is defined for this.
Why not just have donations that are funneled to particular artists or the internet radio station? The "gift economy". End copyrights and licensing now.
Funny semi-relevant article for those who don't read the Onion:
RIAA Sues Radio Stations
Incommings $10 million. Expenses $10 million, royalties paid... zero.
If they get to charge this overhead what is to stop this overhead becomming huge ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Over at mediAgora the details of just such a promotion and payment system are under discussion.
RIAA:
"We exist to collect the royalty money that pays for our existence"
Hopefully the RIAA will implode upon itself.
Retroactive Fuck:Under the regime, small webcasters will be required to pay artists and record companies a percentage of their revenue, sources said. The deal includes language that will make it retroactive until 1998, the year set by Congress as a cutoff for payment, and will allow webcasters to pay the earlier rates in installments. Wow, my friend is on the installment plan for broadcasting over the web, no RIAA music involved either!
Money goes to RIAA for the usual "promotion deductions" Although artists rights groups appear to have no problem with a deal that helps small webcasters, a union official expressed concern about language that could allow the record companies to avoid paying artists their share of the royalty directly. The language seems to allow the recording industry to deduct the top expenses that they incur for setting up and maintaining the royalty payment regime.
All and all the same old shit, but it won't last. As if there were only a need for five recording companies and four broadcasters in the world. Anything the RIAA can agree to is just another screw to all in order to keep their artificial monopoly on selling popular culture alive. 802.11b and similar will eliminate the RIAA racket, bring money back to artists and music to the masses. With government out of future broadcasting, your days are numbered, pig.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The labels that the RIAA support already have all of the means and methods for collecting $$$ and distributing. That's what they do. Seems like another sneaky way to put some of their in-house expenses back onto the artists shoulders, where it least needs to be.
No company or organization (including the mob) has ever brought such a vision of sharks circling the injured as the RIAA/MPAA.
Tell Saddam he gives up the weapons of mass destruction, we give him the RIAA. Fair's fair!
The rates are, IIRC, 10% of revenues or 7% of expenses, whichever is greater. Non-profit orgs will still pay the 7% of expenses; not sure how "revenue" is defined for this.
Those are really basic buisness terms. Non-profit orgs still have "revenue" (money they take in) and "expenses" (money they pay out.)
A non-profit org who does more than just webcast would be well served to seperate the webcasting, though, unless there's allready a provision for that.
And with the recent TV commercials with Spritney Bears and a bunch of pathetic "rap stars" informing the public that downloading music is stealing from them... Of course, there were no respectable artists appearing in those commercials.
disclaimer: don't get me wrong, I don't support music piracy at all, but I also don't believe the RIAA's silly notions that they're "protecting the artists".
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I have a friend that works for a radio station near where I live. She is a DJ. She has explained to me on several different occasions that the record companies have liasons which pay the station to put certain songs on the air (this was called payola in back when there was no liason). The idea is that the record companies get advertising for their albums, with the assumption that people will buy them.
Why is on-air broacasting payed to play songs when wired broadcasters are forced to pay to play?
It seems to me that the same advertisement idea works for both.
If it's not one thing, it's Steve's Mother
All of them. :)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...just plain kinky!
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
It's a simple case, the industry (entertainment industry, covers RIAA and MPAA) wants money, they found out that most of the american public buys into thier shit and will do what they say. Downloading MP3's is communism...ok Mr. RIAA, I won't download them anymore.
The fact is everything in this day in age is so fucking pre-processed it's not even funny. American Cheese lives up to it's name, it's fake and processed like America. It's all about image. Britney (Titney) Spears sells more CD's than 4 guys that know how to play music. Backstreet (Backdoor) Boys sell more cd's than a bunch of guys that are a real bad. It's all shit. The last CD I bought was the White Stripes because it had a decent sound and was like $7 at Circuit City (suck that RIAA, some albums aren't under YOUR control and price inflation). They've discovered they can put out pure shit, charge 20 bucks, and as long as the group "looks" good, it'll sell. Im sorry, I won't buy it. The bullshit in the media industry has to stop, we need to get more REAL bands and less cookie-cutter shit. I'm a "small" webcaster, I've sunk quite a bit of money on my stream, do I make any profit off it? no. there are no advertisements or anything on my website, it's pure fun and done for my love of broadcasting. I do have some RIAA controlled stuff, there's a lot of it, I also have some non-riaa stuff. and this can extend into movies as well, let's not get started on movies released by major movie studios......
those are my views, CD sales didn't slip till the RIAA started bitching and raised prices, now they want to say some 56K stream is hurting them, get your ears out of your ass.
I forgot how to spell this too, had to go to dictionary.com to remember how. :)
But maybe we don't need music collection agencies for radio anymore. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that BMI, ASCAP, and the like are among the richest companies in the world. And what do they produce?
We have the technology today to pay the artists directly. And the cost of a system like that would probably be less than the extra charges that the collection companies add on for profit
As I said, it isn't very realistic. It is hard for little changes to come about in the music industry, forget about big ones like this. Just a little wishful thinking I guess...
When the artists question you about their low royalty payments, you complain about having to pay independent promoters (aka "payola workaround") to get the songs on the radio thus getting exposure.
Now, here comes a bunch of people who want to play your songs, giving them as much if not more exposure, and you're trying to charge them for it?
Well, which is it?
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
"Oh, yeah, we'll give you a discount. Let's see...(um, how much were we going to pay the artist? Ten cents?) OK, we'll give you a ten cent discount. How's that? (Sorry, artist, we can't 'afford' to pay you anything now.)"
Weasel.
That pretty much describes the behaviour of the RIAA, except for the bits which are better described by skunk or snake. (specifically, a boa constrictor)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The article noted that the rate works out to 70 cents per song per 1000 listeners. Now, I have no idea how many people can actually connect to a given webcaster at the same time, but just to keep the math simple, I'll postulate 1000 listeners (and do a little rounding).
At an average of about 4 minutes per song, that's about 15 songs per hour, so that means (assuming I didn't drop a decimal somewhere):
1000 listeners costs the webcaster around $10/hour in royalties, or about $7500 per month.
100 listeners costs the webcaster around $1/hour in royalties, or about $750 per month.
10 listeners costs the webcaster around $0.10/hour in royalties, or about $75 per month.
That strikes me as being WAAAAY over what that many listeners can bring in revenue, considering that advertisers want to know that their ads are being seen/heard by a certain minimum number of listeners.
So I don't see how this is any great improvement over the previously-stipulated rate. It's kinda like telling someone who earns minimum wage that you'll reduce their fee to $1 million, because the previous $2 million fee wasn't affordable.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Banks generally aren't going to fund something so high risk. But what about the webcasters themselves? What if they went to artists, saying "We'll pay for you to record your album if you give us rights to webcast it"?
The cake is a pie
given the ratings that tech TV garners, I'd say /. is the number 1 tech show.
+&x
It's not different... This is the same deal. The new deal has a minimum $2000/year or 8-12% of revenue (whichever is more), provided that your revenue is less than $1 million/year.
I believe that the $0.07/listener/song (70 cents per thousand listners per song) was the original flat rate; the new rate is a percentage of revenues:
"By a voice vote, the House approved a deal that would allow smaller "Webcasters" to pay a percentage of revenues or expenses to the musicians and record labels whose songs they use, rather than a flat per-song rate set by the Library of Congress (news - web sites) in June."
The Future of Music Coalition, The Recording Artists Coalition, AFTRA, NARAS, The American Federation of Musicians, and the International Managers all jumped into the fray on Monday and the text got put back in that pays the artists directly.
The Bill Passed the House on Monday Evening.
Full Text of the Bill as Passed in the House (pdf)
What a numb nut. They could do a simple occasional audit same as done at airwave radio stations.
...???
Zillion dollar expense setting up royalty system; system which demands insanely detailed and obscure information in the web station logs about the specific recording which is played. Expense deducted from everyone.
Zillion dollar ANNUAL profits from selling detailed information and logging systems to web stations so they can fill out the insane logging information. Profits go to
The basic purpose of this royalty system is to make the web stations give the recording industry information which they can turn around and sell.
Incommings $10 million. Expenses $10 million, royalties paid... zero.
Actually I'd love to see them do that. Then we all storm our congress critters with proof that the fees should be abolished completely. The RIAA and artists lose nothing if the fees are zero. The law is a pure burden for zero benefit.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Has anyone heard what they defined as a "listener"?
If I connect once for 5 seconds before my RealPlayer crashes, am I (or my IP address) a listener forever more?
If my IP changes mid-month, am I then a different listener?
Or are royalties based on the highwater mark of number of simultaneous users for that month?
For months I have been here reading everyone complain about the RIAA buying lawmakers.. And then people suggesting grass roots ways to lobby & stop them. Then everyone reply that it would never work. The air of hopelessness was quite frankly making me ill.
This 'compromise' is a direct result of a grass roots effort by a few people who eventually got a lot of people on to the same bandwagon. No doubt all of the letter writing campaigns & interested net enthusiasts who contacted the lawmakers had a positive influence on this situation. The people behind this did not lie down & complain about it. They simply put up ads, web pages, & even audio streams explaining in plain english to normal people what the law meant to them.. And pleading with them to get involved.
It goes to show that in some cases the people CAN defeat big money that buys lobbyists. That laws seeking to harm to public may not be totally destroyed, but can be crippled enough to allow both sides to exist. You just need to stop whining & start getting people involved. The next time someone says that it doesn't work & there is no way to compete should come back & read this thread.
I, for example, have about 20hours of misc recordings of my own music that stream randomly from my site. I am not playing other people's music, however some of the music was produced while I was signed to a label. Does that mean I owe someone $500USD minimum a year to stream my own music? Would someone at the label have to complain first? Someone at the RIAA that has a copyright listing from the label? Howabout I pay the RIAA $500$ to give ME a check for $0.0 for streaming my own music?
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
Quoting the bill...
`(I) For eligible nonsubscription transmissions made by an eligible small webcaster during the period beginning on October 28, 1998, and ending on December 31, 1998, the minimum fee for the year shall be $500.
`(II) For eligible nonsubscription transmissions made by an eligible small webcaster in any part of calendar years 1999 through 2002, the minimum fee for each year in which such transmissions are made shall be $2,000.
`(III) For eligible nonsubscription transmissions made by an eligible small webcaster in any part of calendar years 2003 and 2004, the minimum fee for each year in which such transmissions are made shall be $2,000 if the eligible small webcaster had gross revenues during the immediately preceding year of not more than $50,000 and expects to have gross revenues during the applicable year of not more than $50,000.
Isn't that beautiful? To webcast a talk radio station will cost you $2,000 a year. If your station doesn't play a single RIAA-owned song, that will cost you $2,000 a year.
Ain't life grand?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Thats the 'best' part - Educational, non profits / hobbyist webcasters are NOT included in this deal. After 5 months of jumping thru hoops, we're no further ahead than we were in April.
-Mac / IPMRadio.com
However, one thing that everyone seems to be missing... perhaps until it is too late... is that both non-commercial and educational webcasters were left out of the comprimise. So we are still screwed and will likely have to shut off our webstream.
Joe
The RIAA are very shrewd. By cutting a deal to "give a break" to small-time wecasters at the expense -- or even the appearance of expense -- of artists, the RIAA may effectively staunch the nacent outpouring of artists' support for the consumer on related issues of fair use. Very crafty, those lawyer types.
I didn't get that from reading the article (tho I won't swear I didn't miss it :) but even so.. what would the percentage be? Do they still have to cough up the $500 minimum, even if they have zero revenue??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
According to what I see:
If you play RIAA stuff 500 a month minimum.
If you dont play RIAA stuff 2K a month minimum.
nice of them isnt it to let me play stuff they dont control for 4 times the cost.
Just because they are called 'forbidden' transitions does not mean that they
are forbidden. They are less allowed than allowed transitions, if you see
what I mean.
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