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

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.

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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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.

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.

$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

[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

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: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.

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.

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: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.

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: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

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