Slashdot Mirror
Net Radio Appeal On Royalties Rejected
Station writes "The Copyright Royalty Board has rejected a request to reconsider its March decision to impose an onerous royalty schedule on Internet radio broadcasters. '"None of the moving parties have [sic] made a sufficient showing of new evidence or clear error or manifest injustice that would warrant rehearing," wrote the CRB in its decision.' The recording industry and its royalty collection organization SoundExchange are jubilant over the ruling. '"Our artists and labels look forward to working with the Internet radio industry — large and small, commercial and noncommercial — so that together we can ensure it succeeds as a place where great music is available to music lovers of all genres," said SoundExchange head Simson in a statement. Noble words, but after today's ruling — which will take effect on May 15 unless the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agrees to hear an appeal — there probably won't be much of an Internet radio industry left for SoundExchange to work with.'"
then read this: http://www.savethestreams.org/serendipity/pages/fa q.html
What's the [sic] for? That's normally used to indicate an uncorrected grammatical or spelling error, but there aren't any to correct here.
As a former musician, songwriter, and label owner, I relied on getting paid through performance, mechanical, synchronization, and transcription royalties. It was a regular, dependable revenue stream.
But I've gotten so dependent on internet audio streams like Soma-FM's Indie Pop Rocks. Sometimes, it was the only thing keeping me going when I was working my dead end IT job. I'd have the shortcut to the 128kb stream on my desktop and it was the first thing I'd hit, even before checking my e-mail.
When I heard a song I really liked, I'd write down the name on a notepad, check the artist's site to see if an mp3 was available and if not I'd get it from iTMS. Just like radio, internet streams drive sales.
I had thought that ASCAP and BMI (the performing rights organizations that collect and disburse performance royalties) based royalty rates based on a radio or television station's potential audience, but it seems more complex than that, seeing as the Library of Congress is setting basic rates.
Tomorrow, I intend to research this issue and write my congressman (Rep. Delahunt) and senators (Sen. Kerry and Sen. Kennedy) and ask them to look into this issue. I urge everyone who is a constituent of a senator on the telecommunications subcommittee to do the same:
Conrad Burns, MT, Chairman
Ted Stevens, AK (don't mention those "tubes", okay?)
Trent Lott, MS
Kay Bailey Hutchison, TX
Olympia J. Snowe, ME
Sam Brownback, KS
Gordon Smith, OR
Peter G. Fitzgerald, IL
John Ensign, NV
George Allen, VA
John Sununu, NH
Ernest Hollings, SC, Ranking
Daniel K. Inouye, HI
John D. Rockefeller, WV
John F. Kerry, MA
John Breaux, LA
Byron Dorgan, ND
Ron Wyden, OR
Barbara Boxer, CA
Bill Nelson, FL
Maria Cantwell, WA
E-mail and faxes will probably be better received than snail mail, given the fact that mail to government offices gets delayed while it gets irradiated to ameliorate biological threats.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I guess the official Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee web site is out of date. It was only after I posted this that I realized that Sen. Burns (R-MT) lost to John Tester and George "Macaca" Allen (R-VA) lost to James Webb.
Pretty fucking Web 0.9 if you ask me.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Complain to the government. Write your congressmen and your senators, state and national, and let them know what this means. Then tell your non-geek friends and let them get pissed off too.
Sometimes its hard to believe that companies can get away with things like this, but when it comes to technology most of the country doesn't care enough to come to places like slashdot. Today I was talking to a friend about the evils of DRM, and I mentioned the Sony Rootkit incident and she had never heard of it (and she's not just someone off the street, she's an administrator at a website development/hosting company). If most of the country doesn't know about an issue, its easier to get away with it.
Pandora has a link in their blog to a petition thats been set up, so tell your friends, pass around the link, and use the information on the site to contact your own representatives.
tedivm
Hmm we broadcast from mexico but we use live365 services... howerer the law enforced us to pay royalties no matter where we are...
here is my grain of sand...
To the RIAA, Live 365, U.S. Congress members, U.S. Listeners, and anyone else involved:
I'm Marcela, founder member of Live 365, owner of the yradio account, and Mexican Broadcaster since 1999.
I'm writing to you in the name of all the account owners from Live365 that include their account id at the end of this letter.
Since we consider unfair to be subjected to the abject fees that "the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) issued (new royalty rates for Internet radio for the 2006-2010 period. The ruling increases record company royalties by 140% over 4 years and includes a $500 minimum fee per channel per year)", we are making a fair proposition, at least for the broadcasters that want to be listened in countries other than USA.
It's not that we don't care for USA's listeners. It's just that out target audience lives in other countries, like Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Perú, etc... that haven't had, and maybe will never have a legislation forcing broadcasters of any kind to pay fees for the music we play.
Furthermore, and having worked in the Mexican Radio Industry, I have personally witnessed how the representatives from diverse Recording Industry members, Like SONY and UNIVERSAL offer and pay big amounts of money to radio programming directors, in order to play what they want people to listen and buy. This payola is not only in cash. Cars, home appliances and even houses have been negotiated under the table as payment for playing the music of most of thr mayor labels here.
It's incongrous to ask for payment when we are promoting the artist's work, and when we also play a lot of unsigned artist that ask us to broadcast their tracks, and offer to do live interviews and other promotions to be recognized by our audiences.
Since in our countries we don't have to pay to be listened, we propose...
To Live 365 to block our broadcasting signals to listeners located in countries that have that fee's legislation. (relatively easy to implement, thanks to the users' IPs) and only offer our broadcast to USA listeners when they are VIP listeners and as long as they pay to listen (In that way, US listeners can cover the royalty fees imposed by their own legislation, and maybe, act more proactivly to change their laws). We could even ask you to reimburse our past royalty payments, but we are sure you will need that money to keep your services running, and to implement this IP blockage.
We have discussed and thought a lot to propose you this US' IP blocking, but as far as we can understand, this is the only way to keep your system safe and our signals on.
We will try to support you as much as we can. We have been online using your system, even when in our countries we have several broadcasting hosting services cheaper and free of royalty harassings. We thought that it was better to pay and be strictly legal, but since the fees are raising to ridiculous levels, we cannot afford to keep on broadcasting under the regular scheme. Please turn the tables. We are sure that this time, US listeners will find a way to be really heard by the US Congress.
To the RIAA to agree to let foreign (non US, or living in countries with no royalty fees legislation) listeners to keep listening our broadcasts without paying VIP memberships, and us (non US broadcasters, or broadcasting from countries with no royalty fees' legislations) to keep broadcasting without any royalty fees.
Also, to reconsider the position of our fellow US Broadcasters, that pretty much like us, don't make the effort to keep an internet radio for profit, but for recreational purposes, sharing legally their tastes in music and their speeches with their friends and family. Get real! Most of the independent broadcasters on live 365 hardly gets more than 1,500 Total Listening Hours a month. And they also use Live to upload playlists that they can hear a
That specific royalty is only because "HD Radio" isn't a generic standard that anyone can use, but is instead a proprietary format that iBiquity licenses out to people. There are other digital radio formats that don't have to pay this fee.
You're mistaken. Internet radio is transmitting highly compressed copies that usually sound only marginally better than a cassette tape. It is digital in format, but that does not mean that it is of superior quality. There is a reason why the digital format on a CD is about 40 MB per song and an MP3 of the same exact song is about 4 MB. The quality is lower. If they were streaming some lossless format then maybe it would be a concern. The bandwidth costs alone would drive all but the largest webcasters out of business. A cassette tape recorded off of a strong FM station probably sounds better than most internet streams. This is not about digging money out of a new business. This is about shutting down a new business that threatens the vertical integration of the old business. If people have un-restricted access to new artists and music it becomes more difficult for the labels to force-feed their crap down our throats. This will drive everyone out of webcasting...except for ClearChannel and maybe AOL. Their precious business model secure until someone figures out how to bit-torrent radio streams. (Actually Octoshape is already doing that more or less)
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?
Just received, and followed, this e-mail today. I encourage everyone to do the same, as it will send e-mails out to your local representative(s) in the house and senate. I quote:
? alertid=9631541
Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,
I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.
In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.
Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/
Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.
Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.
I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.
As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it.
Another generation, born from fire.
Great point! You should really mention it to the Copyright Royalty Board, as they have now rejected that line of reasoning twice when it came from the Internet radio stations.
In case you haven't been keeping up with the story, here's the quick summary: Internet radio has to pay two sets of royalties, while traditional radio only pays one. Thanks to the recent ruling by the CRB, that extra royalty that Internet radio pays will skyrocket over the next few years, dealing Internet radio a mortal blow.
And yes, you're right, it makes no sense.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
Actually it is: http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/
I got the mail too, but all I had to find it on the website was click the "Blog" link at the bottom on the page.
Because the royalties don't just go to the composer, they also go to the performers. There will be copyright on the recording of the performance, and the holder of that copyright will profit from royalties.
Given the enormous expense of producing classical music verses popular music, that's not so bad. The vast majority of the expenses associated with popular music are tied up in promotion. Full orchestral pieces need a huge soundstage, require you to pay a large number of highly trained people, need extensive rehearsal beforehand, etc. A record by Ms Spears just requires her to squawk into a mic in a quiet room for a bit and the geek with the autotuner to put in an all-nighter. I have no arguments with paying the relatively modest premiums for a superior product.
I find this ruling a shame though. The comments by the industry body that they are excited to be enabling the internet radio industry are such bullshit. They are secretly peeing their pants with glee that they managed to kill off a source of virtually free, high quality digital music, because without it, listeners will obviously be more inclined to spend some money.
For commercial and for larger non-commercial webcasters the judges set a pay-per-play rate of:
$.0008 per play for 2006
$.0011 per play for 2007
$.0014 per play for 2008
$.0018 per play for 2009
$.0019 per play for 2010
Per Play means the following:
Any time ONE listener hears ONE song (or any portion of a song), that's a "performance." If ONE listener hears ten songs, that's TEN performances. If 1000 listeners hear ten songs, that's 10,000 performances.
So what will the internet radio stations have to pay?
Here's a calculation:
$0.0008 X 10,000 listeners X 16 songs/hr. = $128. It'll cost our imaginary webcaster $128 to play one hour of music for 10,000 people.
At the end of the day, that's $3,072 ($128 X 24 hrs./day) -- for just a single day! After a week goes by, it's $21,504 ($3,072 X 7 days/wk.).
And for all of 2006, this webcaster with a steady average audience of 10,000 listeners would owe $1,121,280!! (the $3,072 X 365 days/yr.)
That takes care of 2006. For 2007, the rate increases 37.5%! So, with no audience growth, the cost of streaming music for the year would increase to $1,541,760.
And the royalty rate goes up another 28% in 2008, and another 28% in 2009, topping out at a $.0019 per performance rate in 2010 (resulting in a royalty obligation of $2,663,040 for that same audience averaging 10,000 listeners) for that year.
Information taken from www.savethestreams.org.
"Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market"
Matthew J. Salganik, Peter S. Dodds, and Duncan J. Watts.
Science, 311:854-856, 2006.
Abstract: Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful
than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively
different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which
products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by
creating an artificial "music market" in which 14,341 participants
downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of
previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social
influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success.
Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs
rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result
was possible.