New Royalty Rates Could Kill Internet Radio

FlatCatInASlatVat writes "Kurt Hanson's Radio Internet Newsletter has an analysis of the new royalty rates for Internet Radio announced by the US Copyright Office. The decision is likely to put most internet radio stations out of business by making the cost of broadcasting much higher than revenues. From the article: 'The Copyright Royalty Board is rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)...[The] math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.'"

Comments

Re:Fine by me

[drkfce]

Don't underestimate how much punishment the average American is willing to take when it comes to something that they are addicted to. Just look at gasoline.

Internet radio, RIP 1998?

[jimmydevice]

Didn't internet radio get killed by the advertisers way back in the late 90's? I thought the unions negotiated a 3X increase in royalties and a inflated listener baseline for payments.

Re:OK...That's solved by not playing RIAA music.

[jb.hl.com]

...

mandated... DRM cruft... broadcast flags... tpm certified OS... Microsoft's wet dream... Linux made illegal

Just, uh, wow. You got all this from where exactly? Your imagination, perhaps?

Re:What's really wrong with this

[johnlcallaway]

NPR?? Quality??

Oh .. you mean elitist and obscure radio.

Whatever dude....

Re:OK...That's solved by not playing RIAA music.

[jb.hl.com]

If this is all news to you

No, it's not. I've heard it all before. I just find the GPs histrionics to be bizarre and unfounded, which was my point. I'm not stupid.