Slashdot Mirror
The SoundExchange Billion Dollar Administrative Fee
palewook writes "On June 7th, Yahoo, RealNetworks, Pandora, and Live365 sent letters to US lawmakers emphasizing they owe SoundExchange 'administrative fees' of more than $1 billion dollars a year. These fees would be paid for the 'privilege' of collecting the increased CRB royalties effective July 15th, unless the Internet Radio Equality Act passes Congress. SoundExchange, the non-profit music industry entity, admits the levied charge of $500 per 'channel' is supposed to only cover their administrative costs. Last year, SoundExchange collected a total of $20 million dollars from the Internet radio industry. Under the new 'administrative fee' RealNetworks, which hosted 400,000 unique subscribed channels in 2006, would owe an annual administrative charge of 200 million dollars in addition to the retroactive 2006 rate hike per song played."
The RIAA will kill off internet radio, then another piece of the 'music pie', and then another and another until it has nothing left.
Is that the politicians want their share of shakedown. Has anyone noticed that Microsoft had zero lobbyists in Washington before the anti-trust lawsuit, and they now spend $200 million a year on Washington lobbyists? Internet radio will have to pay the piper.
Cheer up, the rest of the world will still have freedom on the internet. It's just us Americans who will be regulated out of having any expression.
We'll still be able to listen to Russian stations.
Where's you're "In Soviet Russia..." joke now, bitches?
While I don't advocate someone blowing their office to flinders with a bomb or some other evil terroristic act, I am surprised that it hasn't happened yet (one would think that with all the loosely bound people in the USA, one of them would have freaked out by now and targeted them...)
What I DO advocate is that the RIAA and the MPAA and their associated organisations be banned and eliminated and the music and film artists and industry re-organise itself along more open and egalitarian lines.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Of course it's all administrative costs.
If it would be 99% administrative costs then we have to share a very small part of the remaining 1% with artist! That would make no sense at all.
I think that every company that the CRB says owes them money should simply refuse to pay and force the CRB and Sound Exchange to thereby spend every penny in their coffers litigating against these companies indefinitely. It will not strengthen the resolve of the CRB or SoundExchange to behave in a manner consistent with their decisions, but will force Congress to mediate an action that will be amicable for everyone. Worst case scenario for SoundExchange and CRB: nobody pays them a single penny and they run out of money paying lawyers to sue everyone who eventually files bankruptcy protection to prevent having to pay them. Best hack ever.
As the USA and RIAA, etc continue to crush the USA, isn't the most direct remedy
for the American media consumer to listen to internet radio from provider outside the USA?
The US GOV and commercial media can certainly herd the mass, though for the computer literate
it is possible that they go outside USA while sitting at home in USA?
Either way, the USA is turning into terrible place with much economic stagnation, not to
mention that general intellect is simply absent there.
Yeah - there's a lot of bad out there. I'm especially aware of it because that's what I do.
Well then do us all a favor and stop doing it.
If Pandora has ten thousand listeners like me, that's twenty thousand stations times $500 per station is ten million dollars. That's probably enough to kill Pandora and any other customizable channel internet radio site. But if the internet radio site only had say five channels, that's only $2,500, easily affordable by a commercial site.
My conclusion from this little exercise is that the RIAA is out to kill customizable channels. They don't want you to learn about music on your own. They only want you to listen to whatever the latest pop sensation is. They want to eliminate choice and the extra expense of having so many artists. If they can make it so all you ever hear is the generic artist of the moment, that's all you'll know and all you'll buy.
This is all about control. RIAA wants to make sure they control not just your access to their artists but your ability to discover new artists not under their contracts. Internet radio is a growing force and a growing threat to their ability to pick what music you buy.
I can only hope that they have overreached; that the huge amount of money involved here makes their motives visible to Congress. And that Congress cares. That sure makes it sound like a lost cause, doesn't it?