NPR Takes First Step To Fight Internet Royalties

jmcharry sent in an article that opens, "After the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decided to drastically increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels for streaming songs online, National Public Radio (NPR) will begin fighting the decision on Friday, March 16 by filing a petition for reconsideration with the CRB panel."

Comments

NPR going down the crapper

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since NPR turned into the new mouthpiece for the radical right, I've felt like charging them royalties to listen to their crap newscasts. Morning addition is totally without meaningful content anymore.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Hypergolic]

NPR has always been the news source for the Left. That's why I listen to it!

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, every morning it's like

I'm Karl Castle. This morning president Bush is in Florida to share his reading of "My Pet Goat" with his colleagues.

I mean, is this what qualifies as news?

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[MightyYar]

If you think that NPR is on the right, your head would explode watching FOX.

NPR is very much to the left. Don't get mad at "Morning Edition" for covering the White House just because it happens to have a Republican in it. When the president farts, it's still news.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[andy314159pi]

NPR has essentially stopped all investigative reporting, as far as I can tell. They mostly read press releases for about a half an hour and then repeat the process.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Unnngh!]

I live by DC and have a veritable cornucopia of public radio options, I really can't complain. Some of the nationally syndicated shows are hit and miss with this sort of thing but I've recently heard some decent reporting on NPR that I haven't seen from any other broadcast outlets. It depends on the time of day and the program.

As to NPR being to the left, I think that they present a pretty balanced coverage of the news. If anything they cater to a younger audience than CNN and Fox and I think that a lot of the leftist criticism comes from not so much from a political slant but from a generational slant. The style of news and reporting that is geared towards the 45 and under crowd may seem to have a liberal bias not so much from the content but from the tone.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Anonymous Coward]

When the president farts, it's still news.

Memo from press office to White House kitchen:

Need more beans on the menu to help with identifying the President with the common man. Only add ham, bacon or salt pork into the beans when no Islamic, Jewish or other anti-pork religious groups on the guest list.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[thestudio_bob]

If anything they cater to a younger audience than CNN and Fox

You mean there's less reporting and even more sensationalism?

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Professor Fate]

NPR in Detroit is already in the crapper. Our new program director last year fired the two best DJs in the city (Martin Bandyke and Judy Adams)and switched to an all talk format during the day. Bones: They're dying Jim! Kirk: Let them.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[MightyYar]

They do really, really try to be balanced. But their underlying beliefs poke through. Terry Gross is a good example - she's only a really good, hard-hitting interviewer when her guest is someone that she has an ideological disagreement with. She's not very good when someone like Al Franken comes on - it just turns into a love-fest.

I still prefer NPR to most of the alternative, and really only stray from it when they have the beg-a-thon going on, or when they are doing a 20-minute piece on a harmonica player from Bangladesh.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[linguizic]

You have no clue how bad NPR can get. I live Mississippi where anything with the prefix "public" gets accused of being a part of a leftist conspiracy. The funding here for NPR is SO bad (how bad is it?) they once had a drive time that lasted a month and a half! I would LOVE for the NPR stations here to switch to an all talk format, it sure beats the hell out of the crappy public domain classical that they play here. This is incredibly sad since it was Mississippi Public Broadcasting(MPB) that aired non-stop vital information when Katrina hit--even when their own headquarters was being hit! American Family Radio didn't even do that and they're based way in the north of the state that got a little wind for Katrina. I've talked face-to-face with the director of MPB as she is my neighbor, and she is not an idiot. She's a very capable and dedicated person, but Mississippians are clueless.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[dbIII]

Since I'm in Australia I only get "All things considered" from NPR as a rebroadcast and I find it often good if somewhat slow paced and sentimental. What other programs do they have which can be recommended while they are still online?

As for it being left, just about every international news source outside of the USA looks that way in comparison to CNN et al - I still can't forgive them using file film of Palestinians celebrating a soccer win on the night of Sept 11 and pretending it was film of them celebrating the mass murder - lazy journalism and incitement to riot thrown together.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Anonymous Coward]

Terry Gross is rubbish
Yes, I have heard interviewer threaten to walk out on her because they get abused. Terry is a lesbian, and likes to go after any Republican on gay rights issues. Even when that Republican isn't in office. I have heard her twice ask questions about totally unrelated to the interview topic and get a response along the lines of "Terry I am here to talk about my book on Victoria railroad building, and I am not in office and have never held office. I have no idea what Bush thinks of gay marriage. What is your problem? If you want to ask him, have him on the show." At which point she usually hems and haws and gets back on topic.

Terry is also rarly on anymore. She usually just reruns some interview from someone a year ago. "Terry interviewed Mr. X a year ago. His book is now out in paperback."

Terry really should turn the show over to the her guest interviewers. They are better than she is now. But I assume she makes too much moeny to do that.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[interiot]

Just in case you're not trolling, there are quite a few other public broadcasting stations around the world. The BBC (UK) and NHK (Japan) have English podcasts available... CBC (Canada) does too, but I can't find a regularly-updated news podcast for them. I'm sure there's others too.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Danny Rathjens]

Wow, it never even occurred to me that someone would think of her show as politically oriented. I've heard about 30-40 interviews of hers over the last couple years on my drive home if it happened to be the right time and they were all with entertainers; most of which she seemed worried that they can't think of answers for themselves so she asks these very leading questions and then rambles on giving them their own answer until they realize she isn't going to stop until they interrupt her with their actual answer. :)

I prefer the Diane Rehm show for coverage of politics and news. (Well, the first hour, at least; the second hour is more like Terry Gross' interviews with entertainers.)

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Anonymous Coward]

NPR in Detroit is already in the crapper. That sentence is even more true when you leave out the "NPR in" part.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Anonymous Coward]

You want left? Try Pacifica Network News. NPR is middle of the road Volvo & cocker spaniel in conneticut stuff. Probably the problem is that the CNN&FOXes have pushed the right so far into the mainstream that the middle now looks like it is left by comparison.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[dodongo]

I love The Diane Rehm Show for news and discussion of current events, especially on Fridays when they do a two-hour panel / call-in discussion of the week's current events.

Left, Right and Center is also a good, weekly discussion-style show over current events. Less listener interaction and too short, but still, generally good commentary.

And Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me is a hilarious weekly quiz / comedy show about current events and pop culture.

I catch all three of these, week-in, week-out. They're fantastic.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[daigu]

What is "left" or "right" very much depends on where you stand. The problem with comments like this one is that what gets called "left" in the United States would count as some form of "right" in most other places in the world.

Want proof? Think about the last time you turned the dial to the socialist, communist, anarchist media outlets? Oh, yeah, that's right - those outlet's don't exist in the United States. You think that happened by accident?

Further, some people have done an analysis of NPR's guest list that stated the following:

Elite sources dominated NPR 's guest-list. These sources--including government officials, professional experts and corporate representatives--accounted for 64 percent of all sources...Workers, students, the general public, and representatives of organized citizen and public interest groups accounted for 31 percent of all sources..organized labor were almost invisible, numbering just six sources, or 0.3 percent of the total. Corporate representatives (6 percent) appeared 23 times more often than labor representatives.

Not only is it biased toward "official sources" and "corporations", it is sexist as well:

Women were dramatically underrepresented on NPR in 1993 (19 percent of all sources), and they remain so today (21 percent). And they were even less likely to appear on NPR in stories as experts--just 15 percent of all professionals were women--or in stories discussing political issues, where only 18 percent of sources were women.

and you know what, I will get mad when NPR covers the White House and favors official sources. Why? Because their mandate was specifically to be an alternative to commercial media that would "promote personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak with many voices, many dialects." In terms of accomplishing that, it is a miserable failure.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[MightyYar]

No offense, but I'd much rather hear from policy makers and experts than what some Joe on the street thinks. If I want that, I can go down to the local bar and chew the fat. I like hearing from politicians and experts in their field because these are the people that I normally have zero access to. Frankly, the categories that you listed are very arbitrarily thrown together. Why would students be chucked into the category with the general public, and experts get chucked in with politicians. Does a grad student suddenly change categories in a year when they become an expert? Very arbitrary.

As for their bias towards men - I'm sure that is true, but it would be much more meaningful if you provided some statistics about how other stations rate. If NPR is better than average, they should be applauded. In the case of experts, I'm not even sure that I'd want equal representation of women since this would misrepresent the role that women play in our society - many fields are still dominated by men. NPR's role is to accurately report, not try to mold society into where we should be.

I agree that "Left" and "Right" are pretty ambiguous descriptions. However, I think most people would agree that NPR is slightly left-of-center in the US. They certainly won't make the people who voted for Nader happy, nor will Fox necessarily make the Limbaugh crowd happy.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Ian_Bailey]

CBC has various weekly podcasts, including regional news highlights podcasts. It might not be what you or I would define as "regular", but they've at least been consistent.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[flitty]

NPR is more balanced than any other Newsmedia in the U.S. You want left leaning, go listen to Democracy now. It's funny, because as the nation swings left and right, NPR is perceived as right or left, respectively. During the clinton impeachment, many were arguing about how npr had swung right. And the underwriting. Get over it. Talking about Merc doesn't make me want pills. At least it's not "go buy a sandwich from mcdonalds!"

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[daigu]

No offense, but if you'd rather hear from policy makers and experts, they already have dozens of media outlets that serve your needs. The United States needs more diversity of voices. We need more diversity of "experts". We need commentary from more people that are impacted from policies - rather than "expert" that have nothing at stake.

As for your claims of arbitary categories, it's not too hard really. Politicians and "experts" are typically "official sources". "Students" and the "general public" are not. You, yourself, make these distinctions in your own post saying that you prefer to hear "experts" rather than "some Joe" - and when they president farts (a politician, last I checked), it's news. It seems strange to me that you suddenly find the distinction arbitrary when someone else uses it.

Which brings us to what constitutes an "expert". We live in a culture where "experts" are people that write books on topics but don't know the first thing about them from the perspective of lived experience. Military experts who have never been in the military. Policy experts who aren't impacted by and don't know anyone who is impacted by their policies. Politicians than then go into the industries they regulated, or vice versa - because of their "expertise".

Being an expert is a rigged game that many people play for profit. If you like listening to experts, you should first read a book describing how the industry works:

Public relations firms and corporations have seized upon a slick new way of getting you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral "third party," like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."

Let's assume NPR is "slightly left-of-center". How does it get "left-of-center" when it follows the party line more than 60% of the time? Is it because other media outlets are following it 70%, 80%, 90% percent of the time? What does this say about the range of discourse we have in the media?

FAIR also has a good discussion of What is Wrong With the News? that identifies the problems as: corporate ownership, advertiser influence, official agendas, telecommunications policy, the PR industry, pressure groups, narrow range of debate, censorship and sensationalism. I think the narrow range of debate is most relevent for our discussion here:

Given that most media outlets are owned by for-profit corporations and are funded by corporate advertising, it is not surprising that they seldom provide a full range of debate. The right edge of discussion is usually represented by a committed supporter of right-wing causes, someone who calls for significantly changing the status quo in a conservative direction. The left edge, by contrast, is often represented by an establishment-oriented centrist who supports maintaining the status quo; very rarely is a critic of corporate power who identifies with progressive causes and movements with the same passion as their conservative counterparts allowed to take part in mass media debates.

This problem should be addressed everywhere. However, it should first be addressed in public formats - given their mandate and reason for existing, which is to represent alternative voices that don't get heard in mainstream media and to broaden the discourse.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[MightyYar]

There is nothing wrong with your argument, we are just ideologically opposed.

I already know how people feel about issues, and NPR does plenty of reporting on opinion polls. I want to hear from experts and policy makers. I also want to hear from labor and NGO leaders. However, and am pretty sure that I hear from them quite a bit on NPR... this is why I found the categories to be so arbitrary - why would the head of the AFL-CIO not be in the first category with politicians and experts? I'm not stupid - I realize that many "experts" are anything but. But surely you'd concede that even these faux-experts are better-informed than some man on the street? I'm sorry, but I really don't care what someone with absolutely no credentials at all has to say - I simply don't have enough time in my life to listen to every shmoe with an opinion.

Did you know that most people in this country were opposed to interracial marriage until 1991, and there is still something like a 35% opposition? I tend to not care much about what "regular people" think, because they frankly don't matter. Interracial marriage was made legal everywhere in 1967, back when 72% of the population was opposed. It was forced down the throats of an ignorant populace by the very establishment you decry. I think it also proves that it is much more important to stay plugged in with the pulse of the establishment than it is to keep up with what the masses think. Look at the war in Iraq. Most of the country wants the troops home... it should be open-and-shut, right? But no, congress can't even agree to agree to pull them out at some future date... this result would surprise you if you weren't keeping up with what was going on in the establishment.

Anyway, I think that NPR is left of center... just not very far left. FOX is further to the right than NPR is to the left, IMHO. I don't think that you will see a widely-listened-to radio station embrace either the far left or the far right, simply because there aren't that many potential customers. Though, I have to admit that some of the far-right groups are big enough for niche radio stations. But this is why the internet is so great - you can safely ignore radio and get your news from anywhere you please - even overseas. I love news.google.com because of the wide variety.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[daigu]

It's a share of voice question. If you are going to talk what share of voice corporations have in the media, then you need to identify the share of voice of different interests - such as organized labor. The question I find more interesting is what is the share of voice for unorganized labor? Who are the "experts" speaking for Wal-Mart, Starbucks and other non-unionized employees?

The problem with the credential question is who gets left out. I don't have time for stupid, uninformed people either, but I have less time for people trying to frame and shape my ideas for me - for their benefit.

Let's also not pretend that civil rights was an establishment move, shall we? Loving v. Virginia struck down laws against inter-racial marriage based on the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified almost 100 years earlier. The law is also has to be consistent in such a way that runs counter to "the establishment".

As for the war in Iraq, I would agrue that the topic of diversity of voices in media is exactly why "the establishment" can continue with their failed foriegn policy. I would wager that more American's still believe the stories they were told about WMD, Iraq/Al Qaeda connections, Iraq as a front on the war on terror than know that Hussien and Osama bin Laden were supported and funded by the U.S. government during the last American "war on terror" that was run by the same "establishment". To say such a thing is to be branded a conspiracy theorist - irrespective of the facts.

Further, if the top 4 advertising holding companies combined with the top few media companies, control the vast majority of the "news" and "information" of the world, just how diverse is news.google.com or even Factiva or Nexis for that matter? To pretend that you can just look elsewhere is to be incredibly niave.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[MightyYar]

Why did it take so long for the 14th Amendment to get enforced? I'd argue it had to wait until the establishment was ready to enforce it. The fact is that for 100 years, interracial couples were not allowed to get married, and 78% of the population support this situation... the point of law used to reverse this situation is not really all that important of a detail.

I'd also argue that there's not too much that can be done about people stupid enough to fall for propaganda, and they aren't really worth having on your side anyway. You can try to control the media and win them over to your cause, but it won't really do you much good in the long run. Look at what can be done in spite of popular disapproval.

As for voice, you are right to a point - there is no organized face of unorganized workers... but in practice, unions do raise the issues affecting unorganized workers. After all, it is in their interest to bring them into the union fold. You certainly hear criticism of Wal-Mart on NPR - not so much on Fox :) I don't think the problem of voice is a big as you do - I think that what you are seeing is just marginal opinions getting marginalized... in other words, the media's role should not be to influence people's opinions, but to report on them. Of course, this ideal is silly in the real world, and what you see is the big news outlets trying to pander to the biggest demographic that they can, so everything comes out fairly homogenized. Given the limited amount of frequency spectrum, and the costs involved with running a radio station, I'm not sure that a solution exists to mass media being centered on the mainstream.

The nice thing about the internet is that a couple of pissed-off Wal-Mart workers can anonymously throw up a web site with their grievances on it, and with a bit of savvy marketing and a lot of luck they can actually get their voice heard. This was simply not possible pre-internet. The best that they could hope for was a local news crew coming out and giving them 30 seconds of air time, and even that was a long shot.

Of course, the cynic in me thinks that Wal-Mart workers had the ability and time to do such a thing, they wouldn't be Wal-Mart workers. I'm not sure how to give a voice to those people, and it's sort of the age-old disenfranchisement discussion.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[bill_mcgonigle]

it sure beats the hell out of the crappy public domain classical that they play here

and All-Talk NPR doesn't expose the soft-white, racist, sexist, Euro-centric, underbelly of NPR Classical.

At least that's how it is in Vermont - all dead white guys, all day long (with breaks for news and a 20-minute weather forecast at noon). Maybe other NPR's play other types of classical music representative of our diverse culture?

At least the Jazz is good at night.

just one question

[Anonymous Coward]

N P Who? Who is NPR? Why should I care? Does NPR run on my Ubuntu machine?

Re:just one question

[$RANDOMLUSER]

N P Who? Who is NPR? Why should I care? Does NPR run on my Ubuntu machine?

Duh. It's a discussion of whether NP == NPR. Try to keep up, will you?

Higher prices

[MightyYar]

Does this mean that a song will cost $0.06 instead of $0.05 at allofmp3.com?

Re:Higher prices

[CapnRob]

No, it means that your NPR station will be charged $120,000 a year to stream their broadcasts, when they're charged $20,000 for over-the-air broadcasting. But thanks for playing.

Re:Higher prices

[MightyYar]

Heh, I was trying to be funny. Next time I'll use a tag, but a joke isn't as funny if you have to 'splain it.

Re:Higher prices

[soloport]

Heh, I was trying to be funny. Next time I'll use a tag

Why? Does that make the un-funny magically funny? I'll have to try it.

Nope. Still not funny. :-p

Re:Higher prices

[soloport]

Woa! Look! The magically disappearing tag. Ok, they're good for something. ;-) [posts plain-text this time]

Re:Higher prices

[MightyYar]

It wouldn't have made my post funny, but it would have avoided this thread.

Re:Higher prices

[loid_void]

Skull and Cross Bones Alert - Greed begets pirates, so more greed begets more pirates streaming music; and then it really gets "X-xciten."

Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[isaac]

Funny NPR should be speaking up for the little guy now. They were the ones who in 2000 put the nails in the coffin of low-power community FM broadcasting by joining forces with the NAB to lobby Congress. (References a gogo).

NPR's only interested now that commercial radio is about to shut down their streaming operations (which are far more popular than commercial simulcast streams). Pardon me if I fail to shed a tear for NPR this time around, even if I also reject the CRB's new webcasting royalty rates.

NPR, you'll never see a fucking dime from me until you stand up for real community radio and reverse your stand on LPFM. I used to be a regular contributor to local public radio stations before your shameless whoring in 2000.

-Isaac

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[geekoid]

I'm sure all the NPR execs that read this site will think twice before crossing an anonymous web post.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

NPR, you'll never see a fucking dime from me until I think that NPR would never see a dime from you even if they marched in lockstep with your wishes.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[Guuge]

Since when does LPFM represent the little guy? As far as I'm concerned, it was in its coffin and buried long before 2000.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[isaac]

I think that NPR would never see a dime from you even if they marched in lockstep with your wishes.

Historically false, but thanks for the kind words. After all, past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

-Isaac

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[isaac]

I'm sure all the NPR execs that read this site will think twice before crossing an anonymous web post.

I'm not going to convince anyone at NPR of anything by ranting on /. - but if I raise the issue and others of like mind read about NPR's tryst with the NAB, maybe others will stop contributing to NPR stations until NPR changes their stance. Maybe some of these people will, like myself, be moved to write NPR during the semi-annual beg-a-thons to explain why they've stopped giving. Maybe, eventually, this issue will cost them more than they ever would have lost by competition from LPFM stations. I can hope, at least.

-Isaac

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[swm]

OK, here's one that's signed.

Why I no longer support NPR
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/NPR.html

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

NPR, you'll never see a fucking dime from me until you stand up for real community radio and reverse your stand on LPFM. I used to be a regular contributor to local public radio stations before your shameless whoring in 2000.

Damned right. I'd have stopped subscribing over the low-power FM thing if I hadn't quit years earlier over other issues. My local station pulled some shit on some competitors against the then-current members of the BOD. The competiors were not allowed to include statements (of a size that would not have increased postage) in KQED's routine mailings. They were also denied access to the mailing list so they could do their own mailing to campain for seats. All of these competitors were already members, but the powers at the top of the KQED board did every thing they could to insulate themselves from any possibility of an opposing campaign.

It also became public that the BOD was pimping out the members to advertisers as "a generally affluent population with substantial disposable income". The ads in the glossy monthly mag were usually on a par with what you'd see in Vogue, etc. -- all pricey baubles for the swells.

When protests against the mag became widespread, KQED decided to "fix" the situation by offering a smaller, printed-on-newsprint mag containing only the programming schedule to those who preferred that format. As if we needed any further proof that they just has their heads well up their assholes.

Just the other night, a tin-cup-rattling session had the balls to still refer to themselves as "non-commercial", when they run full-on commercials for Ford and Lexus, at least.

They were also the thin edge of the wedge among S. F. Bay Area PBS stations in easing in commercials. First the sponsor's name was extended with a phrase like, "... where quality is job one". Then the phrase was extended to a short one-sentence paragraph, strung together with ands and wheres, but still consisting of only a single sentence.

The real crack in the dam came when they started using extended paragraphs with multiple sentences, followed by static pictures, ending with full ads that would run on any other station. We're finally only a small step from singing jingles about earth-scented douching products.

At this point, I don't remember whether it was their whoring or pimping that got me off paying them for their insulting behavior.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[Reverend528]

I'm sure all the NPR execs that read this site will think twice before crossing an anonymous web post.

Well, if they're as swayed by his user ID as I am, they'll listen.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[fermion]

While I in no way want to denigrate the importance of the right of a person to broadcast the latest cocktail recipe to 10 of his or her closest friends, and in fact feel that low power radio stations are a basic means of insuring that the public airwaves remain public, the villain in this story is not NPR or any other volunteer run donation funded radio stations. By definition, these donations funded radio stations serve the people, because the people care enough to actually donate funds and time to these stations, as opposed to commercial stations that which may serve no public purpose, or a LPFm station which may only serve the purpose of a single person.

The reason that we do not have room for LPFM stations is that the FCC over-licensed the commercial bandwidth, and did not leave enough in reserve for station that verifiably serve a public purpose. The commercial stations then managed to frame the argument so that the public would complain not about the over-licensing of redundant commercial interests, but about the public stations enacting a protectionist stand. The public stations have to be protectionist. No one is threatening to remove a commercial license, and most commercial stations can afford to increase their power. In fact, by putting forth such a arguments one is effect lobbying for the pure commercialization of the airwaves, leaving no room for public radio, much less LPFM.

The issue is greater than LPFM, greater than NPR, greater than Pacifca, greater than the ACN or whatever your favorite Christian network is. Such stations have limited funds and loads of enemies. On a crowded dial, it would be all too easy to create a network of LPFM transmitters that would block the signals of such public stations. Again, I am not saying that NPR is correct in it's actions. I am not generating a scary scenario so to use fear to move people to my position. All I am saying is that the dial is crowded. In some places, there is a scant half megahertz between stations. In some markets a single entity owns much of the commercial licenses. In some markets, the exact same single is broadcast over multiple commercial stations. There is enough bandwidth available for public, commercial, semi-commercial, and LPFM. The problem is that FCC does not take the public airwaves seriously, and allows the private corporations to do whatever they like. Then the private corporations have enough media access so that people believe that it is the public radio fault.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[kthejoker]

Uh, we *do* have room for LPFM. Look up "spectrum efficiency", or better yet, Read this article (PDF!)

The idea of a crowded dial is an artificial and archaic one. There's no reason we can't have thousands more low-power FM stations than we currently do. And NPR did work hard to kill this. My university's radio station lost a chance at an LPFM license due to this, so yes, I am going to hold it against them.

On the other hand, CRB is a fucking joke and I hope every member on the panel gets herpes.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[IndustrialComplex]

Yet perhaps his /. post has influenced this anonymous contributer. I was considering donating to NPR, now I'll have to check out this situation.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[Deagol]

Yup. I stopped donating that same year. As much as I love public broadcasting, I can't back them up any more until they do a 180 on the low power radio thing. Their stance on LPFM seemed so counter to their over-all mission, I have to wonder what their real rationale was.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[ScrewMaster]

... I hope every member on the panel gets herpes.

I'd hold out for a resistant strain of gonorrhea.

Slashdot too?

[sconeu]

I guess CmdrTaco got hit with a royalty request, because I got "Nothing to see here..."

This could really hurt NPR

[Hypergolic]

For NPR, which runs off of the contributions of it's listeners, this will put a severe dent in it's finances.

Re:This could really hurt NPR

[Seumas]

Man, no kidding. How are they going to spread the increased costs to all six of their listeners?! That will suck for them.

Re:This could really hurt NPR

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

this will put a severe dent in it's finances

Dude! Your ability with logic would put even Mr Spock to shame!

Re:This could really hurt NPR

[servoled]

Don't forget government grants and commercials or as NPR prefers to call them, "underwriting announcements".

Re:This could really hurt NPR

[siglercm]

I've only donated to public radio for vanity promotional statements since they received the $200 million Kroc bequest to their endowment fund. I'm not a finance expert, but at some point their costs should be completely covered by their endowment annuities. So many charities are in much greater need.

Re:This could really hurt NPR

[magicchex]

I know you're kidding, but around here at least, NPR is solidly the most popular station among the people I know and have talked to about radio. Could be partly that our local station, WUOM, is better than most NPR stations, which has translated into greater popularity than most NPR stations. The station where my parents live for instance, WKAR, I tend to avoid. Luckily, WUOM's signal is strong enough that even when I'm visiting my parents who live about 60 miles away I get it loud and clear. Are NPR station finances available to look at for the public? WUOM seems to have such strong support that it seems to have as much money as local corporate stations (for instance, the signal is stronger than almost any other station around here, public or otherwise). I wonder how much being in a college town affects listener numbers also. Both stations are based in college towns (Ann Arbor and East Lansing) but in my experience (which could of course be completely detached from reality) WUOM (Ann Arbor) is considerably more popular than WKAR (East Lansing). Another trend I've noticed is that among the undergraduate students here at Michigan, the vast majority of them have memories of listening to NPR frequently or exclusively when younger and being driven around by their parents. I'm sure there's no causal effect, but it was very interesting to hear when doing an informal survey of Michigan students about NPR.

Anyways, I've completely forgotten what I was talking about. If you got this far, thanks for reading!

Re:This could really hurt NPR

[Seumas]

I'd love to listen to NPR more often, but it really just makes me want to take a nap. Too much new-age crap. And, really, I feel about the same listening to NPR as I feel when I'm forced to watch Bill O'Reilly. Perhaps not quite that bad. But they do replay the same content countless times until you've nearly memorized every word. And as worldly as I would like to be, I really don't care about organic wall-paper makers in a remote Irish village that are saving their money to refurbish the town well. Or, on the flip side, twenty-five minute audio interviews with some British guy that dresses like Captain Picard and built his house to look like the Enterprise from Next Generation.

I know a lot of people claim to listen to NPR, but I think the number that claim to far outweighs the number who actually do. The only time I've actually heard someone listening to it was in the occasional taxi cab.

On the other hand public radio broadcasting is far superior to public television broadcasting. I haven't watched PBS in a very long time, but all they ever had were pledge drives, documentaries about lesbians who swear a lot, hunting shows and round tables of women talking about current events. Oh, and of course all of the outdated BBC content that was three decades old (except for good stuff like Doctor Who, which they stopped broadcasting).

Really, I think public broadcasting in all manner has outlived its purpose. Especially with the internet. Hell, I can get the BBC content directly. Why do I need to get it filtered through a poorly-structured PBS broadcast at additional expense?

The only truly great thing I can say about NPR is that they present their content without the brain-numbing, stupifying, insultingly ADHD-oriented flash-bang, shock-and-awe presentation of other news outlets.

Re:This could really hurt NPR

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a lot of people claim to listen to NPR, but I think the number that claim to far outweighs the number who actually do. The only time I've actually heard someone listening to it was in the occasional taxi cab.

Well, that anecdote is certainly compelling...

I think some people who say they listen to public radio mean they listen to Car Talk or PHC on the weekends. However, I listen to NPR daily. So do many of my family members and friends. There's some worthless anecdotal data for you.

A lot depends on the quality of the local public radio stations. If you live in Ohio, you probably haven't had a great experience with public radio. On the other hand, South Carolina has an excellent statewide network of stations. In other areas the quality can vary from station to station.

Really, I think public broadcasting in all manner has outlived its purpose. Especially with the internet. Hell, I can get the BBC content directly. Why do I need to get it filtered through a poorly-structured PBS broadcast at additional expense?

You obviously don't. OTA radio is much more convenient for many people, especially drivers.

Re:This could really hurt NPR

[magicchex]

I guess at least some part of this must depend on your specific station. WUOM is basically news only, no music (a huge draw for me compared to other NPR stations), and it rarely repeats. I can listen for most of the day and find it interesting and entertaining in terms of news, especially the technology and science news that I find most interesting. Throughout the night, from around 10pm maybe to 6am maybe (not exactly sure of the times) they play a direct feed of the BBC world news, live, which I love for late night driving and listening. It's important to note that the majority of my radio listening is either while driving (which I do a lot weekly) or at work, where internet-listening is not an option. With this in mind, the ONLY radio station I will listen to over the airwaves is WUOM.

Obviously, it really depends on what you need from your radio station, but our NPR station really meets my needs perfectly (especially since they play This American Life twice a week, since I invariably miss the first broadcast). I definitely agree in regards to NPR versus PBS. PBS fell off a long time ago and I've seen no indication that anything will change for them anytime soon.

I for one am glad

[zappepcs]

that someone with public interest is starting to yell. I listen to Internet radio only these days. I'm not wanting the RIAA to send me letters of any kind, and standard radio SUCKS thanks to corporate radio. I support the stations that I listen to because the play the music I like, music that I cannot hear on broadcast radio. Now, the RIAA wants to put the only source of music that is worth listening to out of business??? WTF! Broadcast radio will end up being ALL talk radio.

I hope that this brings the whole thing to public attention in a way that is bad for the RIAA in general. This stranglehold that they have on music distribution will end up killing the music business as we have known it. Perhaps that is a good thing, I don't know, but I can say that from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to see the RIAA legally squeezed for monopolistic practices somehow. Yes, I know its not likely, but they do need slapped down hard.

Re:I for one am glad

[saskboy]

Recently the Payola scandal most recently prosecuted was settled, and Clear Channel and CBS and other stations that have ruined small town radio, have agreed to play non-RIAA content. The trouble is, I don't know if they can get away doing it all in the wee hours of the morning.

Re:I for one am glad

[cryfreedomlove]

How would you suggest that musicians who record music get paid?

Re:I for one am glad

[zappepcs]

There have been no shortage of people that want to help them out. There are no shortage of companies that want to help sell their music. There are millions of people selling stuff online without the help of the MPAA or RIAA.

It has been shown with reasonable efficacy that most artists do not make money from record sales, they make it from touring mostly. Courtney Love had a great rant about that. People do want to buy music they like, but the problem is that they mostly like 'popular' music which is made popular by the 'music industry' because the control the creation and distribution of music/videos.

If that control was broken and dismantled then spread across a much larger group of people and companies, it would represent competition, and create more content, not stifle it. The Internet and digital age is here, bringing with it many opportunities. If MP3 online stores were to become focal points for electronic distribution/sales it would make the whole industry more competative. Music would be priced better, more of it would be available.

Additionally, and more to the point, Internet based radio is now what the radio broadcasting industry used to be before the RIAA members re-arranged it to suit themselves. These same Internet radio stations can front the sales/distribution of music/video media as well.

If the price of a CD was only $7.95USD there would be little point in piracy for many people. If you could get that music at reasonable prices, free of DRM, it would be a booming business without the deficit of having to line the pockets of the current big players in the music industry.

There are hundreds of ways to re-organize the music industry, but the only successful ones I can think of do not include music distributors continuing to get rich while artists do not. There are far too few artists who actually do benefit from the RIAA, despite what we are told to believe. For every artist they do support there are ten more they do not.

If that is not bad enough, the RIAA decides (more or less) what we get to listen to, which band becomes popular... in fact, they have way too much influence on the music industry. The fact that I and many other people no longer have any use for broadcast radio because of the ruination they are bringing on their own industry is the reason they need to go. They ARE ruining the future possibilities of budding artists even as we write on /.

Its time for other people to share in the control and management of the music industry. There is no evidence that the current regime is doing anything but destroying the industry for their own gain.

Re:I for one am glad

[phaggood]

> How would you suggest that musicians who record music get paid?

According to this artist's Senate testimony from 2002, by selling t-shirts.

Therefore, most artists go into debt to make albums. In twelve years of making records, I have never recouped or received a royalty check, even though many of my records have gone into profit. I discovered early on that there's little money to be made from recording albums, and I learned to place my musical aspirations alongside more practical realities in order to supplement my income. No matter what royalty arrangement I made with a record label or even when I produced my own recordings, I never made a livable income from my recording projects alone. So I wrote songs for other artists, toured extensively, sang as a background singer and instrumentalist for other artists, and marketed merchandise. How ironic that, after years of developing my skills and honing my creativity, I generate greater profits selling T-shirts.

Re:I for one am glad

[Jon_S]

Why can't they be paid the same way they are paid on broadcast radio. Right now (even before this royalty increase), internet radio pays more money to the labels than the broadcast stations. All they are asking for is no more increases.

Re:I for one am glad

[mOdQuArK!]

If musicians want to get paid, then they should work for it like every other craftsman & performer on the planet. Anyone who wants to get paid over and over for the work it takes to create something once is just being damn greedy.

Yu0 Fail It

[Anonymous Coward]

compan?y a 2

Why do public radio stations have to pay at all?

[snowwrestler]

It's not like they are profiting from playing the songs. They're funded with public money already, so the payments for these royalties are going straight from our tax dollars to the music labels. Congress should just exempt them from royalty payments altogether via legislation--problem solved. In fact that would be a net win for taxpayers, since we'd get the same public service at a lower cost.

industry standard

[mastershake_phd]

Appealing to an industry controlled board isnt going to accomplish anything. Not for the little guy. NPR might catch a break, thats about it.

Oops, posted to soon.

[geekoid]

So what was wrong with not wanting interference all over their signal?

Re:Oops, posted to soon.

[isaac]

So what was wrong with not wanting interference all over their signal?

LPFM stations were to be held to the exact same technical standards re: interference as (IRONY ALERT) the very same low-power translator stations used by NPR affiliates to repeat their own signals. The difference is that LPFM stations were allowed to originate content, rather than simply retransmit it. I don't see how NPR could raise the interference issue in earnest. No - this was about competition for donation dollars.

-Isaac

Re:Oops, posted to soon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this was supposed to be fixed with S 2686 which was a huge megabill including provisions for net neutrality and opening up the spectrum for community internet. It also had some nasty DRM provisions. Thankfully it died near the end of last Congress but it will come up again. There's just too much going on in the telecommunications area for them to ignore. Watch for it. It might even be bigger than DMCA.

mod D*own

[Anonymous Coward]

from the sidelines, this is consistent declined in market transfer, Netscap3 year contract. and executyes a a dead man walking. never heeded

$120,000 is a low ball

[Jack Action]

Internet stations that stream almost completely music are being saddled with outrageously usurious fees.

Soma FM predicts their fees will rise from $20,000 today to $600,000 for 2006, and $1,000,000 in 2007.

Loosing stations like Soma would suck. I listen to a little bit of normal broadcast radio (usually just the urban hit station to pick up the occasional deserving top 20 hit), but otherwise its internet only.

Re:$120,000 is a low ball

[dbIII]

There really is a radio station called Soma FM? Somebody who read "Brave New World" and decided on the name is laughing at you all.

Re:$120,000 is a low ball

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, Soma FM is online only and made up of of 11 stations that cover a number of genres, if you were trying to make some sort of reference to brainwashing / placating the populace with generic popular music.

Re:$120,000 is a low ball

[abshnasko]

Soma FM predicts their fees will rise from $20,000 today to $600,000 for 2006, and $1,000,000 in 2007

"Today". I do not think that word means what you think it means

Re:$120,000 is a low ball

[bfischer]

www.somafm.com - very good stuff.

Re:$120,000 is a low ball

[Lucidus]

And someone perhaps just a tiny bit more widely read would know that the word "soma" considerably predates "Brave New World" - by a few thousand years or so.

Re:$120,000 is a low ball

[dbIII]

would know that the word "soma" considerably predates "Brave New World" - by a few thousand years or so.

And means exactly the same thing.

Re:$120,000 is a low ball

[HyperVerbal]

i love SOMA FM, if i had the money i would give the max a year to support

I actually read the ruling...

[Overzeetop]

And I was almost embarassed by the judges so clearly fellating the content industries' expert (Dr. Pelcovits) over his testimony. They took his (bought and paid for) recommendations hook, line and sinker. The only thing the content folks didn't get was a 25% premium on content sent to "wireless" users (they must be friends with Verizon), and then only because the expert didn't suggest that there was sufficient marketplace forces to determine the extent of premium that should be applied to portable devices. The judges repeatedly called bullshit on practically evey point of the webcaster's expert. Maybe they needed a better expert than this Adam Jaffe, or perhaps just someone more persuasive - say, someone with tickets to the final 4, an available hunting lodge, and a few cases of single malt.

I'm a bit surprised that there was little to no discussion concerning the relative changes in the fee structure - and that the content industry basically got every cent they asked for (except the 25%).

I don't know the players, but I'd say that there was some pretty significant bias in the panel before the parties even began to talk.

Re:I actually read the ruling...

[Plekto]

The sad thing is that this oney-grab by the recording industry will do noting except move all of th internet radio stations ofshore. All of the potintial sales and possible deals, plus the money they currently pay - poof - gone.

Talk about myopic. I can see a board meeting a few months ago:
"Hey I have an idea! Let's raise the fees for internet streaming to a level that forces them all to go out of business or move offshore!" Somebody needs to be fired for this nonsense, since they way that you stimulate any business like this is by making it easier and less painful to comply/utilize it.

It's not the RIAA causing this problem....

[freshmayka]

Following the money on this one does not lead straight to the RIAA. The people who are threatened by internet radio are the traditional FM broadcasters and now Sirius and XM in the satellite radio industry.

FM is fueled by big corporate advertising dollars and payola.
Satellite radio is fueled by subscriptions.

Internet radio has a mix of the above and an abundance of free stations sponsored voluntarily by their listeners. Now close your eyes and imagine a world where every car is able to connect to internet radio. The brews big trouble for the traditional and satellite broadcasters.

Having NPR step up to this is good news indeed - while NPR is faaaar from a perfect organization this move certainly wins then some brownie points with me.

gQnaA

[Anonymous Coward]

dead. it i5 a dead

Re:Why do public radio stations have to pay at all

[Percy_Blakeney]

It's not like they are profiting from playing the songs.

The CRB specifically noted that they don't care what your revenues are -- all they cared about was making sure that the recording artists got "fairly" compensated for the use of their songs. That's why they shifted away from the revenue-based payment model to the performance-based one.

Congress should just exempt them from royalty payments altogether via legislation

I disagree; there is no reason to exempt a certain class of stations from paying for their music. Either you make everyone pay, or (even better) you give everyone an exemption.

Save Our Internet Radio!!!

[mikewolf]

this law doesn't just affect over the air radio stations, but all streaming web casts. this is a bad deal, and it is supposed to be applied retro actively to 2006 (which will basically put all streaming radio stations out of business).

you can write your congressman or representative here.

for more info on how this will affect streaming radio, check out www.SaveOurInternetRadio.com. i found out about this through soma fm's news section (soma fm is an internet radio station i listen to, i am not affiliated with them)

Re:Why do public radio stations have to pay at all

[enjahova]

NPR is paying for songs. The government gives money to NPR to pay for the songs. So your next logical step is for the government to decide it doesn't want to pay anymore and just take the songs for free? As much as I'd like that in the case of RIAA, I don't think it will go over that well.

Maybe one day when we get over all this IP crap.

Is that math correct?

[HadleyRille]

Reading the article, it's stated that: The suggested new rates would increase to $.0008 per-play for 2006 (retroactively), $.0011 for 2007, $.0014 in 2008, $.0018 in 2009 and $.0019 for 2010.

Then it states: By our estimates, WXPN could be paying about $1 million a year in royalties under the CRB's ruling.

To rack one million bucks in one year, wouldn't you have to play 555 million songs in that one year period? That's about 63,000 per minute. Wow! Those must be some really short songs.

Re:Is that math correct?

[Anonymous Coward]

did you ever think maybe the have more than one internet radio "station"? I know .977 does, they have one devoted to 80's, one for the current stuff, etc....

Re:Is that math correct?

[lowerlogic]

thats $0.0008 per song _per listener_. For example, if you have, say, 10,000 listeners, you pay about $1 million a year:
10,000 listeners * $0.0008 * 15 songs/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year= $1,051,200.00 a year

Re:Is that math correct?

[HadleyRille]

Sorry, that's 1000 or so per minute, 60,000 or so per hour. My math, not so good either.

Re:Is that math correct?

[HadleyRille]

Well, that would be a lot of streams still. The article says they have three.

It was pointed out above that those fees are per listener, something I didn't see in the original article.

As Emily Latella would say: "Oh. That's quite different. Never Mind."

Re:Why do public radio stations have to pay at all

[Anonymous Coward]

They're funded with public money already, so the payments for these royalties are going straight from our tax dollars to the music labels.

If labels were worthless, artists would not sign with them. YOU may not care about the labels' service, but the world does not (and should not) revolve around YOU. If the artists feel like the labels perform a worthwhile service (as demonstrated by the actions of artists i.e. the artists willingly pay the labels), while shouldn't the labels be paid for their services? The fact that your money is being spent by the government is between you and the government. Why should the labels have to pay because the government robbed you (i.e. taxes)?

NPR has Ray Kroc (McDonald's) money

[Anonymous Coward]

Remeber that NPR has a HUGE endowment from Ray Kroc's (founder of McDonald's) window.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=1494600

They don't need your money or Congress's

Re:Why do public radio stations have to pay at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax-based funding of public radio stations is only
a small amount of their budgets these days; the bulk
comes from people's donations and companies' support.

All musicians are Public Servants?

[Nymz]

Congress should just exempt them from royalty payments altogether via legislation--problem solved. In fact that would be a net win for taxpayers, since we'd get the same public service at a lower cost.

1) Pass law declaring all musicians are Public Servants
2) Stop paying creators and workers
3) Profit!

Interesting suggestion, but I'd rather see...

1) Halt misappropriation of taxpayer monies
2) Defund government funded political propaganda
3) Freedom!

Thanks for the offer, but I can decide whom I pay for news and music, without instituting your nanny-state to run my entire life.

Re:All musicians are Public Servants?

[Kelson]

If NPR were "government funded political propaganda," wouldn't you expect it to be more positive in its portrayal of the government and government policies?

Re:All musicians are Public Servants?

[Nymz]

If NPR were "government funded political propaganda," wouldn't you expect it to be more positive in its portrayal of the government and government policies?

Nope, that would be a tactic, and tactics are different based upon the situation.

Chess Tactic
If one person has a material advantage, then his tactic is to force equal piece sacrifices, so as to amplify the material advantage he already has. Having 3 pieces versus 2 is a much greater advantage than having 16 pieces versus 15. And his opponent would of course use the reverse tactic.

Party Tactic
If one political party has a power advantage then their tactic is to keep the status quo, they don't want things to change. Where as any other political party, with less power, would use the reverse tactic and seek change.

So... let's define our terms upon concrete definitions, instead of inductive assuptions.
If funding comes from the government, then it's "government funded"
And if propaganda is political in nature, then it's "political propaganda"

There's Public, and then there's Public

[Kelson]

Actually, NPR doesn't get much public money:

NPR supports its operations through a combination of membership dues and programming fees from over 800 independent radio stations, sponsorship from private foundations and corporations, and revenue from the sales of transcripts, books, CDs, and merchandise. A very small percentage -- between one percent to two percent of NPR's annual budget -- comes from competitive grants sought by NPR from federally funded organizations, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. (emphasis added)

As for the stations themselves:

On average, public radio stations (including NPR Member stations) receive the largest percentage of their revenue (34%) from listener support, 24% from corporate underwriting and foundations, and 13% from CPB allocations.

National Public Radio is public in the sense of being a public service, not in the sense of being primarily funded by tax dollars.

Re:Why do public radio stations have to pay at all

[interiot]

Because non-profit organizations have to pay for everything else. If Wikipedia could somehow get its bandwidth for free, it wouldn't have to do funding drives very often at all. But that's not fair, since bandwidth really does cost money, and somebody's got to pay for it, and the way it's always been done is that non-profits pay for their fair share, just like everyone else. I suppose one could make the distinction that IP doesn't cost money to duplicate, unlike real services or real property, but as far as I know, there's no precedent yet for saying "oh, you're right, this whole IP thing is a bit of a sham, we'll recognize that, but only for non-profits".

Petition site

[Anonymous Coward]

The petitions site is: http://savethestream.org/

Re:Petition site

[castle]

SaveTheStream.org appears to have been slashdotted or is merely an advertisement aggregation.

There was no petition available at the time of this posting.

Re:Petition site

[Reziac]

They might have meant http://www.saveourinternetradio.com/ and http://capwiz.com/congressorg/sbx/f/?aid=9461656&r =1

OPB now has Jew hating

[Anonymous Coward]

OPB (Oregon) has replaced "Performance Today" (the 2 hour classical, had to be cheap), and replaced it with the BBC's "Have Your Say".

If you hate Jews, this is the program for you. Nothing has cratered my respect for the BBC more than this antisemitic hatefest.

My wife even stopped listening and giving money. That is bad. If this show is so vile as to drive away my wife, the most loyal PBS/NPR donator, you have hit bottom.

Re:OPB now has Jew hating

[DagdaMor]

It is more to do with that BBC being the only news agency outside of the Islamic states to actually understand there is more than an Israeli perspective to the Middle East conflict. Admittedly they sometimes verge on being on the Palestinian's side, but heck I can turn on any of 50 other news channels to get the Israeli perspecitve, so I think its very worth while to the other side in a language that isn't Arabic. But I won't hide behind AC status to save my blessed karma.

NPR - being destroyed from within

[hedgemage]

NPR has been on a downhill slope ever since certain parties decided to put a political appointee as its head rather than a more neutral candidate. Just as John Bolton was appointed to be the US ambasador to the UN despite his dislike of the organization, NPR's current head is doing damage in much the same way due to his own political allegiances.

Re:Why do public radio stations have to pay at all

[ScentCone]

They're funded with public money already, so the payments for these royalties are going straight from our tax dollars to the music labels

Do you ever actually listen to "public" radio? A few hours of listening during drive time here in the DC area will have you hearing commercials from large associations, corporations, and other underwriting entities (as well as vanity donors) that want the exposure. If public radio's use of licensed material is a part of what brings the audience that those advertisers want to reach, then paying what the producers of that material ask is just a cost of attracting those big-ticket ads and donations.

Anyone who thinks that just because such stations are non-profits that they don't want all the audience and ad revenue they can get is completely misunderstanding the nature of the beast. They have payrolls to meet, and they have to compete to hire the people they want to hire. Just like any other business, they have facilities to pay for, web sites to run, etc... and they want cash. They attract a lot of their cash through advertising, and they price the advertising according to the audience they can deliver to the advertisers. If that means they broadcast, or stream from their web sites, stuff that costs them money in order to then sell that audience to advertisers, then so be it. Gotta spend it to make it.

Internet broadcast of songs increases profit

[ashghan]

Now I'm no professional on the matter, but as far as I'm concerned artists and labels are getting a great benefit from the increased audience base provided by internet broadcast. I don't see that they have anything to worry about in terms of the current royalty rates as at the end on the day, their audience base has been increased ten-fold at least with the advent of internet radio broadcast. Artists that I would never heard of otherwise have now been brought to my attention, and as a result I have bought CDs by artists that I would never have been aware of if I only had my local radio stations to listen to (which, by the way, are very limited in terms of choice and genre in Australia).

With friends like these

[zerrubabul]

It's nice to see how the record industry treats those who actually *want* to pay for the music they use. Raising the fees 20x - 50x doesn't seem to be the way to treat those trying to do the right thing. And, almost unnoticed, with this decision they've established a system where they get royalties per each play *and* per each listener which I don't think has been possible before.

No it's you

[Anonymous Coward]

Go here. Read the first sentence. Eat brownies.

Time to establish the seperation of News and State

[Nymz]

Public money can only be considered private money, if you launder it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering

1) Taxpayers pay out nearly 500 million a year
2) Politians redistribute it to the CPB
3) CPB distributes it to numerous stations
4) Stations buy programming from NPR
5) NPR claims most income is private, and not public supported

I think it's time to establish the seperation of News and State.

Why Play at all?

[Emperor Cezar]

My question is, can a station not play the music these licenses cover? Kinda like "podsafe" music. Maybe it's time for NPR to start using Creative Commons music exclusively. If enough do it, artist will begin to release more under CC licenses.

Re:Why Play at all?

[belg4mit]

It depends on the genre, it can be very difficult. It's probably doable for a classical
station. For my own favorite, indie on 3WK, it's painful. The owners
would be happy to do so if there were sufficient material available however, they don't
have the time or resources to actually track down 100% "free" content. In addition,
they'd really like to be able to play the occasional track from Modest Mouse or Beck,
as their mood suits them.

Another RIAA Ripoff

[Doc Ruby]

the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decided to drastically increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels for streaming songs online

The new streaming royalty rates don't increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels, they just increase the royalties collected from streamers. The RIAA (ie SoundScan, and predecessors/competitors BMI & ASCAP) have never paid all of the collected royalties to its rightful owners. Instead, the collection agencies keep it for themselves. I hope you're not surprised.

So it's excellent news that NPR is fighting this move. I hope NPR's entry also encourages other well-positioned orgs to complain. These new rates completely eliminate hobbyist and personal streaming to friends, by keeping the $500 per year minimum fee that is now equal to the per-play fee for supporting many dozens of simultaneous listeners. That minimum should be totally discarded, even more important than lowering the arbitrarily high (but still somewhat affordable, until it rises again over the next couple/few years) per-play rates that also squeeze out noncommercial and small commercial webcasters.

Other good show: This American Life

[jdmonin]

I think one of their best is This American Life, a weekly show of snapshots of interesting events of everyday people. Their site has a pretty good description of each show, and you can download the most recent as a good old MP3.

No she's not

[SideshowBob]

Um, what the hell are you talking about? Not only is she not a lesbian, she's married for fuck's sake.

Re:No she's not

[el americano]

Married, but childless by choice, and a strong gay and lesbian advocate for someone who claims to be unbiased. During her Lynn Cheney interview she only wanted to talk about gay rights, even after the woman had repeatedly declined further comment. She mentions the general confusion about her orientation in her book, and implies that she's straight, although she's "flattered by the assumption" that she's gay. So we don't know for sure, and you don't need to get mad in any case.

Not that it matters.

Soma meaning

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the perfect pleasure drug in Brave New World, but based on / inspired by an ancient mystical entheogenic drug.

SoMa is a district of San Francisco.

http://somafm.com/about/whatissoma.html has a few more definitions of soma.

Re:Time to establish the seperation of News and St

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's time to establish the seperation of News and State.

Please quit picking on Fox News.

Donations?

[jpellino]

Hard to imagine a lot of LPFMs competing directly with NPR for money. These are mostly small college radio stations, community / volunteer programs and vanity broadcasting. I give to NPR *AND* my college and to the local charities. The vast majority of donations to NPR are the standard $35, which likely isn't stopping anyone from giving something to others.

Why did I mention college? We set up the low power station at our college in 1979. The field survey was challenging due to the terrain, but we were able to do it. The interference rule were a bit of a challenge, but IIRC weren't as restrictive but still had to be dealt with. Like most small colleges, the money for the college station is funded directly out of the college budget. The bigger college stations are mostly already NPR affiliates.

I for one am glad NPR is there as well as the LPFMs. No commercial station and no LPFM would have been able to do what they did the other day - a story about conservapedia.com - where they counter wikipedia's perceived liberalism with posts contending that all kangaroos came from the two on Noah's ark. They alone in radio have the stones and the reach to get stuff like this out.

then stream from sweden!

[fredan]

one stream/station with up to 3000 listener is about $400 per month.

two streams/stations with up to 3000 listener is about $800 per month.

three to five streams/stations with up to 3000 listener is about $1000 per month.

More information about this. Swedish only.

Reply:There be more piracy in more Higher prices

[OldHawk777]

Is the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) organization the paid for (via proxy) by the RIAA, or the RIAA private DMCA persecution and enforcement organization?

This is as fascinating as other, newly legal, global organized crime [AKA: corporatist/plutocrat] activities.

RIAA wants more money ... they get the right agencies/organizations to up the rates. These organizations and copyright don't represent or protect the artist they exist to exploit the artist and promote their corporatist/plutocrat gluttony for power and control of their customer-base.

Loan/housing/building companies provide low-rate adjustable loans when the interest is very low, real property has highly [housing market] inflated value ... no one appears to notice that the balance is maintained to screew the public [What, HOW?]. As interest goes down ... property goes up and vice ... versa; So, the price can be high, with an adjustable in a short time of the loan-life both property and interest are highly inflated. As interest rates increase on inflation valued property, we proceed into an economic correction of repressive-recession to deplete any liquid assets (money in the bank), then as citizen financial problems and bankruptcies increase houses are sold cheap or foreclosed on, inflation increases decreasing buying power. Anyway, eventually you get back to the start of a "LOW INTEREST" cycle which is good for the folks that can afford a fixed rate mortgage. This is called churning, flipping, scalping ... assets are criminal prosecuted fraudulence in business, but churning, flipping, scalping ... when used by corporatist/plutocrats against the general public without legal or government representation is accepted as legal (well it ain't prosecuted/prevented).

Back 30/40 years ago 15% to 25% loan/credit rates were only obtained from "organized crime" loan-sharks. Today anyone with a credit card can get a legal loan-shark rate from legal federally certified "organized banks". I guess it means the credit card companies pledge not to break your legs or rape your daughter.

Big-tobacco, Fat-diet, sports ... fraudulent products, pills, and gadgets are advertised and sold to the public and never prosecuted ... if they agree to stop hawking an offending product and introduce a different fraudulent products, pills, and gadgets that can still make money as well as the previous snake-oil products. ... there are far to many examples to list them all here or anyplace.

This ain't no democratic capitalist society in the USA, EU, Japan .... However, we do got the best totalitarian corporatist-socialism system, in which to live and raise your children, in the whole world. China, Russia, Mexico ... are just Wannabees. GOD BLESS AMERICA

Oh, incase y'all or congress ain't aware yet the general public and government is financially broke. Most poor folks know you can only live a little while on borrowed money before you file bankruptcy for your children and the USA future.

Where are these numbers coming from?

[RingDev]

FTFA: "The suggested new rates would increase to $.0008 per-play for 2006 (retroactively), $.0011 for 2007, $.0014 in 2008, $.0018 in 2009 and $.0019 for 2010"

Okay, so if we figure each time you play a song you owe $0.002 (rounding up for easy numbers), and on average you play 10 songs an hour (average 4 minutes each with 20 minutes for commercials/station ID), you're paying $0.02/hour. Over the entire day (and night) $0.48. Over an entire year $170.88... So how do they get from $170.88 to $120,000 (or the millions that some stations are claiming)?

I'm not saying anyone is lying about the cost, I just don't see how the costs are being calculated, anyone care to explain?

-Rick

Re:Where are these numbers coming from?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone care to explain?

Sure, you're failing to take in to account 3 things:

1) The costs are per listener. That's $170/year/listener, now figure they have over 10k listeners...

2) These stations don't currently run commercials, largely because they pay so little. Their calculations are done without running commercials(16 songs/hour), and the calculations with commercials come up with revenue being woefully short.

3) This isn't factoring in other costs. Employees, bandwidth, etc.

Re:Where are these numbers coming from?

[Sinical]

Perhaps it's per listener/connection. Also, so far as I know, Soma has no advertising. Revised math:

365 * 24 * 60 = 525,600 minutes a year
4 minutes a song -> 131,400 songs/year
131,400 * $0.02 = $2,628 listener/year

Say 1k listeners -> $2.628 million a year

Re:Where are these numbers coming from?

[RingDev]

Close, but your numbers are off. It's $0.002, 2 tenths of a cent, per song. So 1k users geting 24-7 music will cost you $262,800. To be fair, I think I type-o'd a 0 when I posted that math above.

-Rick

Re:Time to establish the seperation of News and St

[Kelson]

And if those stations only get 13% of their funding from CPB, as stated, that means at maximum NPR gets 15% of its money from CPB, directly or through member stations' dues. Less, actually -- according to the 2005 NPR Annual Report (it's a PDF on the link cited in my previous post), 39% of NPR's revenue for that year came from station programming fees.

So that's 13% of 39%, or 5.1% of the total. Factor in the 6% of stations' funding that comes from state and local governments -- again that's 6% of that 39% -- and we have another 2.3%.

So, 1-2% directly from the feds -- let's go with 2% for the sake of argument. Plus 5.1% from the feds via member stations. Plus 2.3% from state and local via member stations. That's just 9.4%, directly and indirectly.

Are you saying 90% doesn't qualify as "most"?

gah not Diane Rehm

[Bishop]

The producers of the The Diane Rehm Show do a good job of finding interesting guests and topics. But Diane Rehm is a miserable interviewer. She sounds brain damaged. It is painful to listen to her. The show is much better when there is a guest host.

Re:gah not Diane Rehm

[dodongo]

But Diane Rehm is a miserable interviewer. She sounds brain damaged.

I assume you're referring to her voice as an interviewer, which you call "miserable"? That's because she has a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, in which involuntary spasms of the musculature around the larynx cause abnormal fluctuations in, e.g., pitch when speaking.

If you don't like her SD, that's fine; I hope it never happens to you. But if you listen to what she says instead of getting hung up on how her voice sounds (and she does receive treatments for this, so it comes and goes in intensity), you'll find that the way she runs her show is more civil and informed than perhaps any broadcast in the country.

Re:gah not Diane Rehm

[Bishop]

While her SD does not help I do not like the questions she asks. I find her interviews to be rather bland.

Quoting the AC

[RingDev]

"1) The costs are per listener. That's $170/year/listener, now figure they have over 10k listeners..."

That would explain it a bit better. Thanks. And if you're going to post something worth reading... don't be a coward!

-Rick

Re:Quoting the AC

[Reziac]

Slashdot has developed a nasty habit of randomly logging me out, in fact it did so when I went to this story's comment page. I always log back in to post, but it's annoying enough (requires several extra steps to post) that I expect some people don't bother and just post AC.

I'd have modded the parent post Informative instead, but I couldn't get it to log me back in for this page, even tho I have mod points today... geesh!!

BBC's Final Solution to Peace in the Middle East

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you don't hide behind being an AC. Antisemitism is the new black.
The Left's new desire for a Final Solution to Peace in the Middle East is sickening.

What liberal minded person thinks that strapping bombs on your children is acceptable. What ceases fire in the last 40 years has not been broken by the Arabs?

The Arabs don't want peace; they want the genocide of the Jewish race. And they tell EVERYONE that OVER and OVER and OVER. Why doesn't the left believe them? I guess it is a case of a liar never believing anyone else.

Moses wonders around in the dessert for 40 years and finds the only place without oil, and somehow the Jews are the oppressors. The BBC is a racist bigoted organization.