Congress Passes SWSA

signer writes "Congress has passed the Small Webcaster Settlement Act (House of Representatives link). Webcasters have until December 15th to negotiate Percentage-of-Revenue royalty payments, and they have the option of changing their status to non-profit and gaining a delay until June 30, 2003 to pay owed royalties from previous years. RAIN (www.kurthanson.com) has details."

Comments

The Real Question is?

[1stflight]

IS this settlement good or bad for the webcasters? Personally I'm of the mind that radio by defination is free promotion, the webcasters should be charging for it.

Re:The Real Question is?

[pla]

No, not all that great.

For one thing, the RIAA's slice of the pie still comes from *gross* revenue, meaning that stations operating with only a tiny profit margin will get very very screwed.

Another poster already mentioned the $500 minimum, but that I see as less of a problem, only affecting the smallest of webcasters. The percentage of the gross take, on the other hand, doesn't go away regardless of scale.

I have to admit I don't quite get the part about non-profit webcasting (the text of the bill HEAVILY references its predecessor, making it read almost exactly like a diff file). It sounds like they just have more time to decide to fold, but don't actually get significantly better terms. But don't quote me on that one.

Re:The Real Question is?

[mumblestheclown]

"free promotion."

That's up for negotiations to decide, isn't it? One side POTENTIALLY benefits from "free promotion", the other from having some filler between advertisements (or some other benefit).

Making things interesting is that in the marketplace of music, webcasters can always go to alternative music sources if they can't come to what they think is an equitable agreement with their first choice rightsholders--be that agreement the rightsholders get paid, pay, or whatever.

in life, you get what you negotiate.

after they pay these royalties...

[Anonymous Coward]

they'll all be non-profit.

comments from somafm

[pengwen2002]

The folks at somafm have some interresting links and comments too.

The pigs are flying.

[DaveOf9thKey]

I've lived in North Carolina for more than 20 years, and this may be not only the first time Jesse Helms and I agreed on something, but the first time I wanted to stand up and applaud him for following through on it.

Clearly, the apocalypse is coming. Someone tell the FBI...

Just listen to webradio from other countries then

[hazzzard]

Well, I don't really care where the music comes from.
Even if you don't understand the foreign languages,
there are tons of webradios elsewhere
that will not suffer from these problems
(i.e. don't have to do massive advertisements to afford casting good music).

• Antenne Bayern (Bavaria, Germany) - click on "Live h\"oren"
• FFH (germany)
• HR XXL (Germany)
• BBC (UK)

Does anybody have some links to good webradios in Italy, spain, mexico etc.?? Please post!

Re:There's nothing wrong with this bill

[pla]

Umm... Have you looked at the business model of a conventional broadcast radio station, lately?

They do *exactly* what you say seems so "wrong" for webcasters.

And, to add insult to injury, the RIAA actually *PAYS* "normal" radio stations to play that copyrighted music.

washingtonpost.com story has details

[rhwalker22]

washingtonpost.com's story quotes several small webcasters praising the compromise bill. According to the article, the bill "does not establish specific royalty rates for webcasters. Instead, it authorizes the music industry's principal royalty collector, SoundExchange, to negotiate binding royalty contracts with small webcasters on behalf of all artists and record labels." Strange footnote: Sen. Jesse Helms had a big stake in the bill as he successfully protected small religious webcasters from the royalty axe.

Sade

[dolo666]

I'm not normally a Sade fan, and I remember holding some disdain for her music in years past (80's). But after hearing some of her recent stuff (downloaded via Gnucleus), I bought her album and went to her concert with my wife.

Exposure sells and it's the RIAA who are scared because maybe we don't want to buy the crap they are carpet bagging... maybe we will hold out for something better. They don't trust themselves.

One hit wonders shouldn't sell any records because the rest of their albums suck. While good musicians and artists who sweat blood to make amazing albums are still left behind. If the internet could do anything, I think it would even things out so real musicians would make the money they deserve and fluff bands get downloaded for the song that's good and passed over for concerts and cds.

Good music will always sell.

Re:Annual minimum royalty

[Liquor]

There is an annual minimum royalty of $500, which means that the smallest of small webcasters may not be able to afford it.

Umm... I think it's even worse than that.

I'm no expert at translating from legalese, but it sure seems that $500 is for past revenues, in 1998 - and there's a $2000 per year minimum after that, i.e. $6K for 1999, 2000, and 2001, and then another $2K minimum for 2002. And that's just to settle PAST broadcasts. So there's a minimum outlay of about $8500 for ANY webcaster that's been around for those years.

Even if a webcaster is non-profit, with no income, they want 5% of expenses - still subject to the minimums.

Oh, and you're a small webcaster until you make more than a $1.25 Million?

Clear-channel

[Triv]

This is slightly OT, but I realised something disturbing a few hours ago and it does relate to the radio/webcasting debate in a roundabout way.

I've got a friend coming into New York tonight, so I figured I'd check out a few local venues to see who's playing, what's going on and all that. One of my favorite music venues is Irving Plaza. (flash site) I like going to random shows, I like supporting local music and I like circumventing the RIAA as much as is possible.

Chck out the link above - see what's in the lower left-hand corner of the homepage under the Irving Plaza logo? "Clear Channel Entertainment."

Fuck.

I. Can't. Get. Away. :(

Triv