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Day of Silence On the Internet
A number of readers sent in stories about Net radio going dark for a day. Not all of it, but according to the Globe and Mail at least 45 stations representing thousands of channels. The stations are protesting a ruling establishing royalty rates that will put most of them out of business on July 15. "The ruling... is expected to cost large webcasters such as Yahoo and Real Networks millions of dollars, drive smaller websites like Pandora.com and Live365.com out of business and leave a large chunk of the 72 million Net radio listeners in the dark." SaveNetRadio has a page where US residents can locate their senators and representatives to call them today.
Ya know, this sucks so bad that I had to torrent some music at work to listen to since I didn't have my streams. :(
Can all fish swim?
US NetCasters will either move to a country without those laws
OR
use an SSL tunnel to a server in a country without those laws.
I wonder what they do to Net radio stations with "ALL TALK" or ALL News" format?
Damned stupid over-bribed politicians.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Not sure if it is or not, but it is perfectly possible for copyright holders to bypass SoundExchange and negotiate (lower) royalty rates directly with the Internet Radio stations.
And that, friends, is ultimately the solution. If Internet Radio stations would just drop music that hasn't been made available to them at reasonable, practical, rates then (a) they'll continue to survive and (b) SoundExchange will need to review its rates or face oblivion. The only way it would benefit SoundExchange and its members to continue to charge high rates is if they don't want their music played on Internet Radio stations at all.
The real question here is why the various groups representing Internet Radio aren't doing this.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That's the model for Terrestrial Broadcast, where you have a limited geographical catchment.
Internet Radio.. Well, I'm sure that there's a few million pretty eclectically oriented people out there that'll match your music tastes exactly.. Maybe just a few tens of thousands in the world.. But that's enough to keep a small radio station going.
Who knows, that could slowly grow to be the next "Popular Music" in time. Every popular 'Formula' expires in time. Then it's up for grabs who engineers the next one.
Given enough groups of 'eclectic', small stations that serve a few tens of thousands, there's a good chance that one of those will hit the next 'magic formula' that could well knock the current record labels on their behinds. Stuck on the outside of the next "Rock and Roll" as the younger business model steam rollers them into history.
And being as they're broadcasting on the net.. They can reach the world, not just a hundred miles or so from their broadcasting station.
Personally, I'm all for a small station that fits my needs.. I no longer listen to the 'big boys' as they just don't cater to what I like.. It'd be refreshing to hear new, good stuff rather than listen to my existing collection over and over again..