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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.
.... five users wonder what happened to their favorite web site.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
At the bottom of the
... internet radio stations that weren't running for profit, but simply for the enjoyment of broadcasting? How does soundexchange propose to get blood from a stone? Or would that be disallowed completely, even if the person wasn't broadcasting any music that they might have say over?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Pandora, Yahoo music and many others are participating except for CBS-owned Last.fm
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.
because, like the radio, it broadcasts a stream, users 'tune in' to the stream. The stream does not reposition for new connections that have 'tuned in' with the exception of an obligatory "THANKS FOR LISTENING TO THIS STATION" or whatever. There is no interactivity, the user can not choose where in the history of the stream to begin listening. This is a bunch of crap. =(
If you want to find your local congress critter, and ping them on the subject, Go here. This link takes you to a nice little cgi app that takes your zip code, and gives you the phone numbers for your house and senate rep's, along with a short script of talking points. If the Internet Radio Equality Act, (S. 1353 in the senate, and H.R. 2060 in the house) can get some sponsors, and get passed, we're all in much better shape.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
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.
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.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
The fact that this price increase is retroactive absolutely blows my mind, especially when you consider how large of a price increase this will be. Retroactive changes to the law is one of the hallmarks of a failed legal system. How many radio broadcasters will even have the kind of money that is now being demanded of them?
Ok well here's talking yourself into the jaws of the lion on Slashdot and IANFRWW (I am no &*@!ing Right Wing Wan&#&!) but I struggle to see why this is inappropriate. The content of these stations is the music. The value of the station to advertisers is the number of people who are going to listen to it AND those stations use those stats to price their ads with the ad providers. Paying pay-per-track rather than pay-per-listener is clearly inequitable when the stations themselves earn money on a per listener basis. Hopefully they could create a carve-out for amateurish for-fun operations but let's not bleat for full blown commercial operations - there's no inequity here. /me puts on my flame-retardant helmet
This current plan to hike royalty rates would be apocalyptic for internet radio. Its retroactive effect alone (back to January 1, 2006) would bankrupt all but the huge players.
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Here are some useful sites where you can find out what you can do. If nothing else, contact your congressional representatives and tell them to save internet radio by sponsoring the Internet Radio Equality Act.
http://www.savenetradio.org/
http://www.savenetradio.org/act_now/index.html
http://www3.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/callaler
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I now know who cares and who doesn't. I got a letter back within about a week from Jim Matheson, our Representative, who seemed very adamant about how wrong this proposed legislation is. He even went on in detail about why he wanted internet radio to stay the way is is (or become free, even). Bob Bennett didn't respond. Orrin Hatch, who is himself a recording artist (in a loose usage of the term), seemed to be sidestepping the issue in the letter he sent back. It was almost as though he agreed with the rate hikes. How someone who gets paid to make music can support the RIAA is beyond me. Though I guess Roarin' Orrin's reply didn't really surprise me, I guess there are things in life you never get used to.
This issue is emblematic of a much larger phenomenon that is only going to increase over time. That phenomenon is the increasing gap between modern society and what the bureaucracy perceives it to be. The government had enough trouble when change was slow. Now as the speed of change gets quicker by the week, the out-of-touch nature of government becomes not just an issue to laugh about, but one to be of great concern. Political ideology combined with an insularity from change will stifle those who are the best and the brightest at the expense of those that are the most powerful.
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?
They should really be using Ogg Vorbis, because it's VBR nature means it encodes silence just that much better than MP3 or AAC ;-)
The problem with Government is that they forgot they were trying to legislate an international network.
Radio stations like EBM Radio are purely unaffected mostly by this ruling. Of course they don't play much MPAA music as it is (otherwise why would we listen to them?)
Maybe some enterprising foreigner will setup a internet radio proxy service overseas beyond the reach of the MPAA?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The US stations could set up SSH tunnels to servers in Canada - 'internet underground railroad radio stations'...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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)
Here's a letter from the gen manager at WCPE:
h tml
http://theclassicalstation.org/save_our_streams.s
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!
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.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
The real goal should be to have the RIAA go silent for a day.
Hasn't the music industry realized yet that without radio (in any form) they would have zero distribution for new music and fall flat on their faces? If anything, these radio stations should be paid by the record labels for playing their songs for free and getting them much needed exposure, especially when it comes to the next big pop artist. Unbelievable.
17 USC 114(d)(1)(A) exempts "a nonsubscription broadcast transmission" from the exclusive right under section 106(6). I would assume that "broadcast" is defined as a radio transmission licensed by the FCC, not a packet stream sent to IPv4 address x.x.x.255.
1. I myself have bought albums after hearing certain artists' songs on other net radio stations -- music I would never, ever, ever have heard otherwise except perhaps in the drunken haze of a goth club.
2. Several independent artists have sent me singles and even entire albums and other promo kits, encouraging me to put them in rotation. One synthpop artist wrote:
And another said, after sending me some tracks and I liked them but mentioned I'd never heard of this group before:
This has happened dozens of times. It's good for the artists who are trying to get noticed; it's good for the audience who gets to discover new music; it's good for the broadcaster cause it's just fun. I get permission from many of the labels or artists to play their stuff, and when I don't, well, it's a freaking 96k broadcast that can't be copied without some technical know-how (certainly much more difficult than jamming a tape into your radio and hitting "record"). Exactly who is being harmed here?
You know, there ain't no Benjamens in the net broadcasting trade. We do this for fun and the love of the music. The RIAA's outmoded and antiquated business models, and their continued attempts to strangle the life out of emergent technologies, is absolutely appalling. I'll continue to broadcast from my host in Germany and here's a big screw you to the suits. I don't make a single cent off my broadcast, and I don't play the kind of music that would come close to competing with the mass-appeal fare on the normal airwaves. You'll never get a dime from me.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
This law only kills internet radio in the United States, it doesn't affect internet radio stations outside the US. I already listen to stations outside the US, and I'm sure there will be a heckuva lot more if this legislation passes.
So, in effect, this law will only serve to outsource these stations to other countries -- places where the RIAA can't extract any royalties at all. Brilliant, RIAA, brilliant...
Rather than writing you representive, in this case it might be better to write your favorite band. Tell them which albums you have and the concerts you went to, and then tell them you can't buy any more of their CDs because their music is covered by SoundExchange. Ask when they will release an album under creative commons.
We are all just people.
Shut off the whole freakin' internet for a day in protest.
I'm all for it. Everybody should at least try having a real life for at least one 24-hour period anyway.
USA != Internet.
That is all.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
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.
That's exactly the point. To get the attention of selfish people like you who will only take action when their daily routine is affected.
Maybe instead of complaining to us, or to pandora, you should complain to Congress. Make the need for such outages unnecessary, and we'll stop promoting them.
You assumed that the elected representative looked at your letter. Bad assumption. That is the job of a staffer, who compiles a list of opinions each way for the Rep/Sen. They don't physically have time to read all of thier mail. Bulk e-mail just gets bulk deleted. Unread. Even staffers don't have time to read all the botnet sent letters they get. There are only occasional letters actually read by your elected representative. The best of the best, or one from an identified large donor, or one from someone who needs help that can make the elected official look or feel good.
You can figure it out, at 3 minutes per letter, 10,000 letters means they would need about 30,000 minutes per week just to read the mail. that's 500 hours per week. A full time job for about 12 people. This is assuming the letters actually get read. the staffer using a form letter to answer will not have that much time. More like 20 seconds really. Do the math.
Still, your opinion will be entered into the matrix, what's done will usually be where the majority opinion lies on that matrix.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.