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

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?

[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.

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.

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

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.