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."

Comments

Re:If you didn't vote Libertarian YOU ASKED FORTHI

[KKlaus]

Whoever modded me offtopic is a retard. The post I replied to was on the subject of libertarianism, was it not? Surely I didn't overstep the bounds of the discussion... but thanks anyway whoever thought they were making slashdot a better place by doing that.

Re:dollars $ dollars

[Oscar_Wilde]

Pet peeve of mine. How do you pronounce "$1 billion"?
 
With my pinky finger at the corner of my mouth and a pool full of sharks with lasers attached to their heads in the background.

That's how I pronounce it. Muhahaha.