Slashdot Mirror
Small Webcasters get Powerful New Ally
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."
The best trance stations on the internet went down because of this law, and my music selection has hurt since. The only one left is Digitally Imported, which is ok but I like Tag's Trance and XTC radio better. A "dance" radio station started broadcasting in dallas recently, it is ok but is very repetitive. And I did buy two or three cds of artists I had heard on tag's or xtc, but now I buy none. Well, those were import CDs anyway and RIAA probably didnt get anything from them.
You can: A, pay this wildly insane rate that will put you out of business. B, pay this lesser wildly insane rate that will put you out of business. C, hold out for a better deal.
I'm not a big fan of Jesse Helms, but it appears
that he is doing exactly what he should do as a
senator for North Carolina. He's representing the
interests of the state's residents in the Senate,
vs. representing the interests of an out of state
campaign donor.
How many states stand to gain under the webcasting
rates as approved in the House? Will there be a lot
of new jobs pursuing small webcasters who haven't
paid up? Will there be a lot of new technical skills
dispersed through the population by reducing the
number of webcasters through expensive licensing
and/or royalies fees? Will there be a boom in artisic
expression thanks to reduced chances for artists to
gain exposure?
Helms is right on this one. I wish more legislators
were looking out for their own constituencies on
matters like this, DMCA, etc.
A large chunk of classical music manuscripts are out of copyright. That means that if you can find someone to perform it, you can create free music. How are musicians paid? Recordings of concerts, where the costs are already met by selling tickets, might be one way. The quality won't be as high as a specially-made recording but it might be good enough. Whether the performers would agree depends on how much money they would get from enforcing copyright on the recording and trying to sell it commercially (not much I suspect).
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I work in a large CD store on the East Coast (Which one? I'll give you a hint, we've been financially fucked ever since the late 1990s, only partially due to P2P, more due to some really stupid decisions made out in California [that's another hint]). This gives me a unique opportunity to get a mildly decent idea of what people are buying - there's an almost representative sample of college kids, ten year olds, minivan moms, old fogies, hippie burnouts, and Dr. Joe Average in his SUV. Granted, classical music is not the largest seller in this store. But the people who buy classical music buy in BULK. It's not uncommon for one customer to slap down three Benjamins (that's $300 for those of you not 'hip' to my street slang) at a time for his latest classical bonaza. And several "artists" (Charlotte Church, Bocelli, Sarah Vaughn, Diana Krall) have reguarly placed in the top 25 sellers for the store - during weeks when Dave Matthews, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and other mainstream artists came out with new releases. Granted, I'm not a fan of any of these artists (and Ms. Krall is slightly more in the jazz/vocals realm) - but what's important is that these people are selling in big numbers, which means SOMEONE out there is buying the stuff. To say that "people don't like classical music nowadays" is a rather ignorant statement to make. One of the reasons why classical doesn't often make it to the charts is that, let's take an example... Beethoven's 9th symphony. Would you like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Ensemb-- do you understand my point? There's a wealth of different versions to choose from, and so the already merely-moderate consumer base is spread even thinner.
Granted, classical isn't usually that popular with the under-30 crowd (generalization). But it's been constantly popular with the elderly for the past three or four generations - and those aren't the same elderly, because OLD PEOPLE DIE. However, new ones are always cropping up to take their place. You can usually tell them by the Oldsmobiles with the stuffed animals in the back.
I've been awaiting the damage to WCPE for some time. Happy to see that they might not be affected so greatly. WCPE is a great station where they play classical music and DON'T just get money from the government, like PBS. It's a good example of how the market has demonstrated the ability to provide something people think it can't, more efficiently than the government.