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Small Webcasters get Powerful New Ally

Posted by Hemos on from the beat-the-man dept.

An anonymous reader writes "On, Sunday, October 20, 2002, the RIAA's subsidiary, SoundExchange, was set to introduce draconian new fees on small internet webcasters - fees that were designed to drive those webcasters out of business and preserve the RIAA's monopoly on the distribution of music in North America. One of those small webcasters is the Triangle's classical music station, WCPE - quite possibly the finest classical music station in the world. Now it turns out that WCPE has an 800 lb gorilla in their corner, and he's set his sights on the RIAA."

5 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. Read the article. Darrr... by Viewsonic · · Score: 5, Informative

    It says he stopped it because smaller webcasters said the new 'lower' rates would be worse than the 'higher' ones after a certain amount of time and would drive them out of business. Even the new 'lower' rates were too high for some of them.. So im guessing it'll go from .07 per listener to maybe .01 which would still be too much IMO.. RIAA doesn't deserve squat for free advertising. RIAA should be paying webcasters to play the music.

    1. Re:Read the article. Darrr... by peter_gzowski · · Score: 5, Informative

      Jesse Helms blocked the legislation because the lower rates were still too high for many webcasters. However, these lower rates were not worse for the webcasters than the higher ones. The legislation was to change the rate from 0.07 per listener to some percentage of the webcasters' profits. For most webcasters, about 10%, for more profitable channels, 12%. However good intentioned Mr. Helms' blocking was, it will force webcasters to start paying (retroactively) fees based on the old system. They don't have to start ponying up all the dough quite yet, though, as this Salon article details.

      You are right that the RIAA should be paying the webcasters, just as they do with the regular radio station promoters (that's a whole other problem, though).

      --
      "Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
  2. Re:Huh? by Yobgod+Ababua · · Score: 5, Informative

    I believe that was the infamous legislation which had a last minute 26 page addendum tacked on that changed it from being designed to ease finanical impact on small Webcasters into something deisgned to save a mere handful of the largest small webcasters and leave the others to hang.

    It snuck through the house before people realized it had changed. So blocking it in the Senate actually was acting on the side of the small webcasters.

    Check out the previous news on the subject for more details.

  3. Do the math by martissimo · · Score: 5, Informative

    the difference between that "reduced flat rate" and the 70 cents per 1000 listeners per song can really be quite huge (even to very small stations).

    lets say a station reaches 100 people on average and at 4 minutes per track averages 15 songs an hour. that's 360 songs a day, or 131,400 a year... at the other rate of 7 cents per 100 listeners it works out to a fee of $9,198 a year. to someone like this a flat rate of $500 seems like a pretty huge difference... heck this flat rate would come to almost half as much even if you only averaged 10 listeners (500 vs 918).

    too bad the flat rate is only good till congress acts on the pending legislation, because this deal would probably actually be fairly viable for quite a few webcasters

  4. Helms is not running for reelection by Brian_Ellenberger · · Score: 5, Informative

    Someone mentioned this before, but he got modded to 0 for some reason. Sen Helms is not running for reelection. His term is up in January. There is no "shakedown".