Web Radio Negotiations Carry Poison Pill

Adambomb writes "It seems that the deal that saved Net radio at the 11th hour, the new terms that would limit the maximum fee for multiple-channel Web radio broadcasts, contains a hook. To qualify for the cap, broadcasters must work to ensure that stream-ripping is not feasible. Given that the analog hole will always exist as far as I can imagine in such scenarios, is this even possible?" The article mentions the measures Net stations could easily take but have been reluctant to — lowering bit rates, playing jingles over the music, cross-fading songs. How long before they are backed into using these techniques?

Comments

Italian Radio

[Bios_Hakr]

When I lived in Italy, I noticed the DJs always talked over the first and last 20 seconds of every song. A friend told me it was so that people don't record the music.

It's kind of annoying, but understandable. The RIAA wants to use MTV and radio as an advertisement for CDs and DVDs. The artists want to use the CDs and DVDs as an advertisement for live performances. The radio stations want to use music as a filler between their own advertisements.

In the end, everyone makes money.

Payola killed the radio star

[vivaoporto]

lowering bit rates, playing jingles over the music, cross-fading songs. How long before they are backed into using these techniques?

That can be really annoying. I remember listening to over the air radio in Brasil, in the middle nineties. FM radios were beginning to consolidate, and to cave into the pressure of the Majors, they began with this annoying habit to cut the music, crossfade into the other, to play the station jingle over three times over the song right over the catchy chorus. The list goes on and on.

Today, it is impossible to listen to radio there, not because of all these problems, but because payola there is rampant, and if you are lucky, you get to listen the same 50 songs over and over and over again. Once I recorded 24 hours of radio programming, and I was able to identify a group of 8 songs (I can remember the exact number) that played at least 4 times that particular day, and one that played every 2 hours. That was a special spot on the programming called "the song of the week", played every two hours, every day, for 7 days. The other radios had a similar sport, with variations in the name ("the best of the week, the hit of the week"). It is a mafia, and it is not exclusive on U.S.

Payola killed the radio star, and the internet will kill the payola star. Well, at least one man can dream.

Digital hole

[Joce640k]

All the sound cards I own have an option to record "what you hear".

If you can hear it you can record it digitally.

Even without this there's SP-DIF connectors, etc., no analog conversion needed.

It's all moot though. So long as the RIAA sells CDs in shops then all music will have perfect copies available on P2P, no matter how much DRM they put into the online versions (sorry to break it to you, but your emperor's naked!)

Re:Crossfading songs?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a DJ at a local radio station, we're on both online streams, and the AM band. My co-host and I _always_ cross-fade one song into the other. We don't like delays, and we hate that second of dead air between songs. It took me a while to get the hang of it, and it really is an art. It takes timing, skill, precision, and an ear for music, being off by so much as a tenth o a second completely ruins the transition. It takes planning, we don't just take a a bunch of songs out at random and cue them in succession. Some tracks just don't transition well into others. It even allows us (or allows me, anyway) to broaden and diversify our sets by getting away with playing tracks that, stylistically, are outside the confines of our designated programming. Hell, last week, I pulled off a seamless transition from Black Tape for a Blue Girl to oldschool Enslaved, just to prove that point. I'd never have gotten away with it without cross-fading.

We pride ourselves on being able to pull off transitions so seamless at times, our listeners have actually had to check our online playlists to tell when we go from one track to the next. I think it shows that we really love what we do. It makes putting together a 3-6 hour show more fun for us, as it isn't simply cuing music, as much as it is an actual performance. and we'd like to think it makes the show more fun and entertaining for the listeners. Our feedback suggests that our listeners do indeed appreciate the extra effort.

Neither of us have ever really had the thought of how this may complicate the process of ripping streams cross our minds. Frankly, I don't see a point, nor do I care much.

It's not as if you can't find the bulk of what we play (unless it's a promo direct from the record label, or some obscure live recording sent to us from the band, or some of our own original material) on BitTorrent or SoulSeek. You have the artist and title, all you need is bloody 30 seconds to run a search, and given a decent connection, two minutes to download the song.

Re:What the.... fuck... was this?

[AKAImBatman]

I don't think that the analog hole is the real concern. The question that everyone should be asking is: How many pirates get their music from web radio? Does anyone even bother trying to record web radio?

It seems to me that the RIAA members are stuck back in the 1980's when everyone used their tape decks to record music over the airwaves. We're not there anymore. Most people care enough about the audio quality that they'll either purchase the song from iTunes (more convenient, less hassle!) or download a copy from P2P that someone else has already pirated. And I can tell you that the "someone else" probably didn't use net radio as a master. He probably went out and purchased a single CD, ripped it, and (if he was enough of a jerk) returned it to the store as defective.

The RIAA and its members need to get their heads out of their rears and get with modern times. Dollars to donuts says that any study on the piracy of net radio would find it to be nearly non-existent. Their worries amount to nothing more than chicken little crying "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" If by some miraculous event the studies showed that people were stream ripping, then maybe it would be a good time to embrace services like iTunes to their fullest extent?

Offering the product that people want at a price the market will bear is the best thing that any music company can do. The people who would spend the time engaging in stream ripping or P2P piracy aren't going to pay for the music anyway, so you gain very little by spending your time trying to stop them. Having DJs talk over music has never stopped freeloaders in the past, so I don't see why it would stop them now.