Internet Radio Will Go Silent on June 26th

Spamicles writes "Thousands of U.S. webcasters plan to turn off the music and go silent this Tuesday, June 26th, to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that, if implemented, would lead to the virtual shutdown of this country's Internet radio industry. In March, the Copyright Royalty Board announced that it would raise royalties for Internet broadcasters, moving them from a per-song rate to a per-listener rate. The increase would be made retroactive to the beginning of 2006 and would double over the next five years. Internet radio sites would be charged per performance of a song. A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays."

Comments

I wrote both my state sentators...

[LinDVD]

You want a politician to respond to you? Snail mail is *still* the best way. Take ideas from a template if you must, but make most of the stuff, if not all of it up yourself. Be concise, but be sure and make your point. Bitching about a situation is obviously easier, but I got a reply back from Senator Boxer about a week ago (with the original letter sent in late May), which stated the following:


Thank you for writing to me regarding proposed changes to the assessment of royalty fees that Internet radio broadcasters pay to musicians and record labels. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

As you probably know, the federal Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has released its plan for charging online radio broadcasters for royalties. The Internet Radio Equality act of 2007 (S.1353), which was recently introduced in the Senate, would nullify the CRB's proposal and prevent the new royalties assessment plan from taking effect.

S.1353 is currently being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Please be assured that I will take your comments under advisement, should this legislation come before the full Senate.

Again, thank you for writing to me. Please keep in touch with me about this and any other issue of concern to you.

Re:Supply and demand

[Attila Dimedici]

Yeah, but why does this apply to Internet radio and not broadcast radio? The principle you described is the model for broadcast radio, yet broadcast radio does not pay this way. This is about the record industry eliminating internet radio. The record industry controls what is played over broadcast radio, there are too many internet radio stations for them to get that kind of control over. The other problem is that the amount of the pay-per-listener fee exceeds what advertisers are willing to pay per listener.

Re:Retroactive?

[idobi]

I run idobi Radio. We're an alternative/rock station that's doing fairly well, in terms of popularity.

The rates set by the royalty board is incredibly high and completely unfair. I agree I'm bias on the issue, but if the current rates are upheld, we would be required to pay $900,000/year just in royalties.

The current rates, if applied to traditional radio, would require a station like KROQ in Los Angeles to pay $1.4 billion/year just in royalties. Last year, they mad $67 million in revenue. If one of the most successful traditional radio station cannot afford these royalties, how can any internet radio station that still developing a revenue base be able to?

http://www.idobi.com/news/?p=25408

Re:does this affect SIRI/XM streaming

[ClickOnThis]

does this royalty regime apply to the streams from XM and Sirius?

The short answer is "no." In fact, internet radio stations would much rather have it the other way around: they want to pay what satellite radio pays. Right now, they're paying twice the satellite rate, and the new increases would push internet radio rates astronomically higher, retroactive to January 1, 2006.

In effect, the RIAA (through the Copyright Royalty Board) is trying to kill internet radio.