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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."
I'm not even in the music industry, but I'll be shutting down my web site (w/a notice explaining why & a link if someone has one) on that day to bring awareness to this issue.
Magnatune and other *truly* indie publishers go on business as usual.
The RIAA doesn't need another 500 "internet stations." This might be the biggest non-event since the breakup of the Smiths.
Or would that be disallowed completely, even if the person wasn't broadcasting any music that they might have say over?
Exactly. Soundexchange gets paid even for non-member music. The law says that if you can't pay them, you don't play the music.
Now, there is one thing though, Soundexchange is required to allow artists and radio stations to contract directly and individually and is required to track all of these individual contracts so that they don't bill for those recordings. As creative commons grows, we might have a bit of a weapon to fight back with, if on our end we set up something more-or-less automatic for creating those contracts, it may turn out that we can swamp Soundexchange with them if they haven't already automated their end of the deal. If we can, and Soundexchange fails to keep up their end of the law, since they are "deputized" to operate the law, their failure might be prosecutable as malfeasance (if you can convince the Department of Justice to care about corporations), especially if it can be shown that at some step of the way they intentionally refused a contract or knowingly billed for a contracted performance.
So, you know those prices we told you to pay last year? We were totally kidding about that, it definitely should have been higher then. So go ahead and fork over the rest of the money you owe us.
Seriously, though, how in the heck can a price increase be retroactive?
It seems that they got what they want in larger royalties but they're effectively shutting down the businesses that would pay those royalties. Exactly what do they think they've won here? I'm not an internet radio listener but the logic of forcing your revenue stream, however pitiful you think it might be, out of business doesn't seem to be right for anyone involved.
Last.fm is, at least historically, a UK company. Since their servers (and the music) is broadcast from the UK, I'm not sure this will affect them. The problem now, of course, is that they're now owned by CBS. Still, with Lastfm being a UK branch/division, they should be safe.
But of course, IANAL.
They will be disallowed completely despite being not-for-profit, although there is some legislation pending to change this: "Internet Radio Equality Act", S-1353 in the US Senate, HR-2060 in the US House of Representatives. So, if you would like not-for-profit Internet radio to continue, please contact your friendly members of Congress.
I have no idea what the situation is for indie music. My (perhaps overly cynical) guess would be that they don't differentiate between the two.
This will piss me off if I've got no music. I *paid* to listen to the music there. Will they cut me off?
I understand the protest, and I sympathize. But I'm not a "free" subscriber. I've paid them for a service. Will they deliver it?
Stop buying new CDs or MP3s is the first thing you can do. If you need it that badly, go buy it second hand or just listen to it on a FM or Digital radio station. Support your favorite artist by going to their concerts and buy their merchandise at those concerts. Music Industry has to go, it's up to all of us to starve it to death.
"Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute,"
Robert Goodloe Harper (1818)
I'm kind of glad on this point, only for the reason that I listen to last.fm at work and it makes my day that much more tolerable.
I guess I shouldn't even listen to them, though, for that day and just bring some CDs to work.
If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot immediately.
*shrug*
Mayhap this is the boost Creative Commons licensed artists have been looking for.
You set up a SINGLE SERVER out of the country, say Sweden, Norway, Canada. You feed a SINGLE STREAM to that server. So you pay royalties on that single stream.
Now, that server just happens to mirror out to a few thousand listeners. But it's a different server, not you the Internet Radio Station. You're streaming just a single stream...
Potential here? I could see relocating a few big boxes and a few fat pipes out of the US just for such a purpose. Could be a lucrative little business. Kind of like Akamai for audio streams...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I do listen to a lot of Online Radio, primarily KTRS 550, and KMOX out of my home town of St. louis at work. There are some afternoon shows I like to listen too and now since I live out both of their radio range (I can get KMOX sometimes at night, but now that the Cards games have moved...)
Still I listen to more podcasts of shows that aren't in my market like the Tony Kornheiser show and then some of the ESPN shows like PTI.
I had my own radio show on the college radio back in the day, and I remember we were charged by the song, not the number of listeners, but as a low power system, I'm not sure how all those rates are calculated anymore. If that is still the case, this just seems like a way to cut competition for terrestrial radio stations.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Let mp3/ogg/wma/whatever propagate where they will. If you never pay for music now, you never will. And then there are those like me who like to sample things before spending money on it. If it's something I won't listen to more than a few times here and there, I likely am not going to buy it. Why should I? I'd be happy to just listen to it on the Internet streams or radio when it plays. No need to own something like that. Of the mp3s that I have downloaded, I've either bought the CD used (or borrowed from a friend if even the used price was ridiculous ... usually the 'one good song on the whole disk' situations), or simply removed the downloaded stuff, since it isn't something I listened to much, and if I did, I'd want better quality.
Use compressed music as advertisement.
Artists should be making most of their money off of live performances.
Sell CDs for a reasonable price (this is the real problem, RIAA. Why are you too greedy to see this?). $10 instead of $20. I *might* pay $15, if it is an artist I really dig and there are a lot of good songs on the CD. For older music, sell it for $5-$8 per CD. Sell MP3 CDs with 3-10 albums on them in compressed format for $20 (or the equivalent online, whatever).
Why is this so difficult? People don't pay for the shit because it's ridiculously over-priced. I definitely won't pay for compressed music, and buy most stuff used these days, or from local bands themselves at CD release parties ($5 a CD).
Compressed music == advertisement for the real product. If your product isn't worth paying for, then maybe you should fix THAT problem. For stuff I like and want to add to my collection, I much prefer having the uncompressed 'master' to encode and catalog as I see fit. (on that note, stop with the bullshit DRM crap, Mmmkay?).
Just some of my thoughts on the subject.
Because you can "opt out" and tell the RIAA to go screw themselves if you like. And, in the example of Magnatune (and sites like them) this can be included right in the agreement - ie if you release a work to Magnatune you tick a box and they automatically handle the "opt out" notification to the RIAA.
Or, better, still, we get some sensible laws just as soon as someone takes the time to challenge this ridiculous law in federal court. It is, after all, a violation of copyright in that it allows the RIAA to essentially claim rights on your behalf that you may not want claimed... actually, it's little different than the Google "opt out" program the copyright statists are being so pissy over. Of course this essentially means exactly what I initially said will be the scenario because the RIAA is never going to go after a station that provably plays only "independant" material of the sort mentioned - because the last thing they want is such a precarious law to actually be tested.