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Doom and Gloom for Web Radio
DailyTech posted interviews with the founder of Pandora and management from Proton Radio (and Proton Music) asking them what SoundExchange's latest rulings mean to them. A lot of net radio stations are dreading the upcoming changes in royalty rates, which are said to be around 400%... a number that would bankrupt most of the industry. An interesting read for anyone who uses online radio.
what are the royalty rates like up there?
If these royalty rates go through, I'll be the first to bail on internet radio in the post-quality era.
Do a lot of people actually listen to streaming audio from Web radio stations? I would think I'm more likely to hear what I want by listening to my own mp3 collection, than by relying on someone else's idea of the perfect mix.
...But don't we all?
I'm sure the DJs do a good job of coming up with a mix of songs that work out for most people -- but for any given individual, I would think the best mix would always be one they chose themselves.
I mean, what Web radio station is going to play Weird Al, Jimmy Buffett, Francis Cabrel, Jim Croce, John Denver, Deuter, Enya, ELO, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Buddy Holly, Brannan Lane, Willie Nelson, Peter Paul and Mary, Tom Paxton, Trevor Pinnock, Pachelbel, Pandora, Queen, Starship, Tchaikovsky, etc -- all without playing any of the many (very popular) artists whose works just don't happen to work for me?
Yeah, I have very weird musical taste -- I admit it.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Web Radio has been a great vehicle for me to discover new music. I have bought a lot more music lately because of discovering new artists which I heard through Web Radio. I Don't know why the industry is hell-bent on destroying a good thing for both the music industry and the consumer. I just don't get it! I'm mad and frustrated...
I'd like to see Webcasters move to jurisdictions that sound exchange cannot touch and end this BS once and for all. Russia comes to mind.
Royalties kill the internet radio star....
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
What do nerd libertarians that listen to internet radio think about this?
Doom has been ported to everything in existence, so it was only a matter of time before it became playable on Web Radio. It will be interesting to see Gloom running though, since I don't have much reason to bring one of my Amiga 1200s down from the attic these days to play it.
Isn't the assault on internet radio really being perpetrated by the media overlords like Infinity and Clear Channel who own US politicians and see any encroachment into their space as competition?
I'll stick with Jimendo.com for my online music, thank you very much.
I really hope Pandora isn't affected by this.
Its the only internet radio station I listen to, because it offers up music I haven't heard before but is based on my previous preferences. I'm worried my taste will stagnate without it.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I have been listening to SOMA and Bartok radio for years. It's wonderful stuff and a lot better than whats on broadcast radio. It all flows together and they get new stuff inserted in there, too.
It's a lot better than listening to all my stuff I know by heart and just hitting 'shuffle'.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
That's worrying...
Jason
http://video11.b00mtube.com/
There is certainly a market for "Internet radio" in some form. It just isn't a market that pays anything meaningful yet.
This leaves the content owners in somewhat of a quandry. They can allow "Internet radio" (whatever that means) to skate by without paying anything and try to convince the rest of their market that the music is worth paying for, or they can pretty much say "everybody pays!" Obviously, "everybody pays!" is more lucrative but it also doesn't start the worrying notion that the music is worthless. There are enough sources for that idea today as it is.
By forcing everyone to pay they may indeed be shutting the door on a possible future paying market. But they may also be preserving the current source of their revenue. I don't think the music industry is ready to go to an ad-supported business model, and I don't think you want to hear ads for Pepsi at the end (or in the middle!) of every song.
The only internet radio I listen to these days is BBC radio, you can't beat it for quality programming and no ad's, that's unlikely to get affected by any internet radio royalty ruling because (a) it's main listener base uses old fashioned radio wave technology and (b) it's in the UK where licensing clearly controlled by some more enlightened individuals. There is another place to go if you want more control over your listening - imeem.com is kinda like youtube for music - people upload music and then you can listen to music. Imeem does some mojo to figure out who the artists are and pays them a cut of the ad revenue, but if the artist has said no then all you can hear is a 30 second clip of the tune. The most astonishing thing is that somehow they've managed to convince one of the major labels - Warners - to sign on, this means that artists like Metallica and Madonna who used to sue site like napster are now supporting 'free' sharing of music. Sure there are a lot of artists still blocking their music, but there's so much in the way of fully licensed music that it's hard to run out of things to listen to. In a way it's like napster was, but with instant gratification and with the warm fuzzy feeling that the artists are getting compensated every time you listen. Forget most internet radio, much of it remains at the same production values as a winamp playlist in shuffle mode, I left that behind as soon as imeem turned up.
Up for it.
If and when pandora and finetune are shut down due to ridiculous royalty schemes.
DOWNLOAD FROM P2P ALL THE FUCKING MUSIC I WANT!!!!
I've really had it. I've found that its far easier to listen to internet radio then it is to download all those songs and build my own playlists. All the music I do buy I get from iTunes, but shit, if the greedy bastards at the RIAA succeed in their misguided goal of killing internet radio, I'll just steal the all the music. I mean if they cannot deal reasonably with the internet radio listening public, then screw 'em.
When you take away reasonable means of legally listening to music (in an effort to prevent privacy no less!!) you are just going to drive more and more people to illegally download music.
When you try to upend an industry, as Web radio seems
to be trying , the incumbents will fight tooth and nail
to prevent it.
The incumbents' hegemony is based on geographic and radio
frequency monopoly and the calculus of mass markets. Web
radio threatens to bypass all of that. Content distribution
monopolies (RIAA, MPAA, etc) help the industry, too.
Upstarts might be lucky enough to have traditional competitors
follow the rules (although that, of course, doesn't always happen),
but giant incumbents can always get the rules changed.
I think this round goes to the industry, but the fight is not
over.
It's a very sad time for internet radio right now. It's always a shame how rules, regulations, and laws can ruin such a convenient piece of technology.
Because I think the time has come to call the RIAA's bluff and simply refuse to kowtow to their extortion. Maybe Jay-Z will have to sell one of his solid gold Bentleys to pay for the crack rehab for his pit bulls.
....lots of money and kick back ties to the music industry....
The Kickbacks in the music industry have been uncovered before and laws passed to make such illegal.
So its now going on at a higher level of abstraction and harder to prove. Fewer involved at the proof point.
With todays technology there is no reason for middle men to exist to plunder the process of paying the artist.
What is lacking is the exchange system to make it all work without plundering.
Seems to me that the labels should be a service the artist go to and pay for, rather than the other way around in a contract distorted manner. And with this it means all proceeds of sales goes to the artists. This way the artist are in control and the labels become competitive in service they provide to the artists.
All artist start small and work their way up and on the way might find investors outside of the label service which should be prohibited from doing so. Where the label service may then be more motivated to protect the artists from abusive investors..
The point is that there is apparently a serious lack of checks and balances, that such lack of allows for abuses and kickbacks that bias what choice of music the rest of us get to hear and know about.
Things change!
Record Club of America changed the way record clubs worked.
The internet technology has changed the way Real estate is done (in the process uncovered abuse techniques and resistance to improvement).
Isn't it time to change the way the music industry works so to genuinely reflect what the consumers are interested in?
I have purchased dozens of songs from iTunes because.... ...I heard them on net radio.
WHY THE FUCK is the industry trying to kill something that is MAKING THEM MONEY!? I don't understand these morons! Internet radio is like FREE ADVERTISING. It has introduced me to songs I've NEVER HEARD BEFORE, and ended up enjoying enough to purchase legally!
Are these people morons? I know the answer is obviously yes, but damn! Why are such idiots in control of such valuable intellectual property? Radio play can MAKE or BREAK a song.
And the funniest part? A lot of songs that net radio introduces to people may be older, more obscure back catalog stuff. Stuff that costs the record companies $0 to produce, because it's ALREADY PRODUCED. It's like FREE MONEY.
*grumble* I'm just exasperated at how STUPID record company execs are sometimes. They can make their millions without being total ASSHOLES, but they chose to be assholes anyway.
You might like to think that your have weird musical taste, but based on your list of artists, you are pretty "normal".
There are internet radio stations that play stuff that simply isn't available anywhere... or would take dozens of hours to track down and purchase. One such station is LuxuriaMusic. I'm sure there are other, but that is the one that I listen to.
Provide a way to easily purchase the songs in their playlists and THEN we can talk about how unnecessary web radio is.
It sounds as if the record industry is upping the rates for people they know they can get it out of. I would draw a parallel between this and colleges upping tuition to current students.
Last night I read an interesting article in the New York Times that centered around Producing Guru Rick Reuben: for whom I have tremendous respect. In amongst the 10 pages typed is what he deems to be an effective model to bring the recording industry back: charge everyone a subscription fee.
I'm not too fond of a model where the user only owns a subscription and the record companies have 100% control over the content. But Reuben is right, if only in principal. The only way the recording industry can sustain itself over the long term is to change its way of doing business.
The game.
Whenever this "land grab" by copyright owners and corporate mass media is reported, on Slashdot or anywhere else, no one cares to even discuss it. Slashdotters will get all up in arms over DRM and other copyright abuse, but directly extorting independent content publishers into extinction doesn't even generate a yawn.
Then the nerds complain when the "free stuff" disappears.
Why bother with a lot of stories and discussions of why the corporations act like they own all our content and media, when we ignore them whenever they grab it?
--
make install -not war
The market will just decide and people will listen to web radio from countries where web radio is free.
:D
Whole Industries decide to move their businesses to other countries because of restrictive laws and regulations.
Why is it so difficult for a web radio listener to change the channel?
You wont reverse this move by complaining. You might reverse it by listening to web radio from Iran because that's the times we live in. You can't go onto the streets with signs and voices and think you change something. You have to work and think like mild terrorists instead. Look how little the terrorists of 9/11 had to do to turn your country into hell
The RIAA has been trying for years, without success, to pass legislation to require all internet radio broadcasters to use DRM in their streams. In practice this means only one thing: they desperately want to make it illegal to broadcast internet radio in mp3 format.
The RIAA has got in their heads that the combination of DRM-free readio broadcasts in mp3 format with tools such as StreamRipper is leading to rampant music piracy. I have no idea how rampant the piracy actually is, but it could be bad at least in theory. The problem is that it is possible, with relatively little technical know how, to point a tool like StreamRipper at, just for example, one of the many fine music 128k music channels available at somafm.com, leave it running, and come back a day or 2 later to a directory containing gigabytes of free MP3 music.
Anyway, since they have not been able to make mp3 broadcasting illegal, SoundExchange's behavior is simply the RIAA attacking the "problem" from a new front. They want to shut web broadcasters down. They know the new rates are way too high! That's the whole point. They want to bankrupt all the broadcasters who are streaming near-CD-quality mp3s out to the world for free.
I read Usenet for the articles.
I apologize if this is a dumb question but does this whole shitstorm impact Internet radio stations that play only completely independent stuff (ie. non-label content)? Or is SoundExchange trying to extract a pound of flesh from anyone running their own station regardless of what actually plays?
pandora IS affected why are you listening to it anyway? www.last.fm is much more efficient and has a much wider range than pandora. like you i first found pandora but now i only listen to last.fm you can be more selective and in general it is better at guessing.
www.tdobson.net #### Dare to Dream #### blog.tdobson.net
Why not switch to a non-RIAA music format. Sign local indie bands only. Anyone with a big business contract is SOL
No sig for you!!
You don't understand them. The abundance of music available on the internet and the growing social and commercial awareness of this is actually hurting the big players in the market. For years now they've managed to maintain a monopoly on what you listen to. From the payola scandals to the market consolidation, to the ever present billboard and it's impact on radio scheduling.
They've had a nice clean business model that's worked for them for some time. They invests thousands and thousands of dollars promoting a small number of billboard approved artists. Promoting them then reaping the profits.
As the market pool increases the value of their product decreases. It's competition, something they haven't really had to deal with in a long time. I listen to a wide variety of music I make purchases from retailers and labels from all over the world. In this scenario the only people who win are the artists (ew?) and the small dispersed labels. The markets moves too organically to control. I realize a lot of people don't spend nearly as much time digging up music but what used to be considered indie is swiftly moving into the mainstream. The recent sales slumps and the admittance that quality might be an issue is only relevant because right now they are having a very hard time telling you, the consumer, what quality is. You're discovering artists accidentally, via friends and god forbid, if you do listen to internet radio theirs a world of music that the RIAA doesn't even see. Couldn't possibly.
So their's no free money. I mean it's going somewhere but without the fine grained control they've had it's not going exactly where they'd like it to. And this trend will only continue.
Their not stupid, their confused. Their circling the wagons.
And, FTR, it's still us who gives them their power. We can get angry but until we actually choose to do something about it we've got about as much right to complain as someone who doesn't vote. So keep tuning in. Let them clamp down. I hope eventually they bite off more then they can chew. Their an impediment to innovation.
Quack, quack.
The problem with that theory is, why go through all that trouble only to end up with songs whose start and end overlap with other songs and have gone through audio processing when you can simply get onto the usual torrent sites and other P2P networks and get CD rips?
I have no doubt P2P is costing them money, though not to the tune they calculate; just because someone downloads it doesn't mean they would have bought it otherwise. But online radio is not costing them money, it is free advertising. I have nothing against revenue sharing; that is how radio in Europe has worked for a long time and at the end of the day the station is making money off the music too. But the rates need to be reasonable as the stations are also advertising the music.
Right now, SoundExchange is being rather unreasonable.
There was a story a little while back about the french version of riaa agreeing to allow music on deezer. I hope this is not a stupid question but how will deezer.com be effected by this. Are the rate increases an attempt to gain market share? This is my first post ever though I have been reading for a year and a half. If I am being an idiot I am sorry.
fesaj
until the fat lady sings.
Internet radio: "We couldn't afford the royalties..."
We get free music and now DOOM AS WELL?! Woah! Shooting up robots to some awesome techno and rock...What's gloomy about that?
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
In the end, the indies can win. The big labels won't negotiate direct (because the lack of DRM), which is the only way around the compulsory licensing law. But the indie labels or totally indie artists without a label can do their own direct negotiation and get their music on web radio. They generally don't care about DRM (or outright oppose it, anyway).
The catch is that for N web broadcasters and M labels/artists, there will now need to be N*M contracts arranged. In other words every broadcaster will have to have separate arrangements with every label/artist. This is what the original compulsory music licensing was put in place to avoid, so that instead of N*M arrangements it could really be just N+M arrangements through the specified agency (N broadcasters paying royalty fees to one place and M labels/artists collecting them from one place). The "compulsory" aspect to this is that any broadcaster that wants to play any music can do so through the arrangement with that agency, and the label/artist has no choice other than to go collect their cut from the agency.
So the big question is how many web broadcasters will be able to make enough contractual arrangements directly with the many labels/artists to have enough music to keep things flowing. Imagine being an indie artist and finding hundreds of voice mail or email messages from broadcasters wanting to sign a direct contract. It will be a tough job. And it will be even tougher because the broadcaster is on the hook in case the small label/artist was really performing someone else's music. The contracts have to include the real songwriter(s), too. Making sure the music is genuine can be very difficult.
The indies can win. But they have to play this right to do so.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
WARNING! That link goes to a stupid Flash-only web site. Must be a bunch of fools running that place.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This is not the end of webradio. Only for AMERICAN webradios. Most will migrate to more friendly countries and keep operating from there!
This is a stupid shot in the foot. When they (Music industry) realize the results, will change. Remember US cryptographic restrictions that powered israeli software industry?
They invest 100's of thousands of dollars. They control the radio and put the music into circulation. A small core of entertainment magazine pick it up and they can more-or-less run the campaign from top to bottom. More importantly after having done their research and worked out their business model they know where to invest that money and they see a return.
But internet radio completely skews that model. Artists get exposure. Free radio makes it impossible to seriously influence who gets played. What artists are becoming popular. It's uncontrollable. Unless you put money back into it. Then things can be bought and sold again. The fringe dies off. The market becomes manageable.
Quack, quack.