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.

Comments

Meh...

[FlyByPC]

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.

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. ...But don't we all?

Re:Meh...

[ContractualObligatio]

In terms of choosing tracks you like, you have a strong argument.

However, if your approach to life is that predictable gets boring, or you like the idea of hearing things you've never heard before, then you can see how the "best mix" for some of us cannot be comprised only of artists we already know.

But there's also the question of what you're in the mood for. I like having the choice of radio vs. my own collection. If I'm in the mood for my own selection, I've got it. If I want to hear new stuff, there's the radio. And with both a wide selection of stations and services using predictive algorithms to select tracks I might like, I have a lot of control over the degree of randomness in the mix of music I get from the radio.

It's that mix of my music vs. radio that's the important thing for me - I confess it's a small part of my listening time is to internet radio. But a small percentage across millions of potential audience members is enough to justify the internet radio stations. Unless royalties are raised so high it puts them out of business.

The point of most markets (and commercial arrangements) is to find a price suitable to both parties. Pricing internet stations out of the game, when they could otherwise provide a useful service to a niche market, is an abuse of power. It's a bad thing.

Re:Meh...

[eli pabst]

The problem with just playing your own mp3 list is that you're not exposed to anything new. I'm not a big fan of DJ'd web music for the very reasons you list. I prefer Pandora, which basically takes the Songs/Artists you like, deconstructs them according to their fundamental nature (like dynamic male vocalist, major key tonality, rhythm guitar, etc) and then using some complex math finds other types of music based on those properties. You then fine tune it using a like/dislike button. It actually works very well and I've found some new music that I really like. Plus I don't find myself fast-forwarding through songs like I do on Yahoo's music service.

Re:Meh...

[Svartalf]

Considering that it's at least slightly harder to collect MP3's of new Renaissance Festival
and Celtic music (It's doable, because it had to be to be able to listen to the stream in
the first place...) because the media moguls have determined that this style of music isn't
available through them- YES. The same can be said of many of the web radio stations.

This isn't about someone picking and choosing the "perfect" mix of MP3's as you put it. It's about
being able to listen to things that the radio stations and labels just won't touch because they're
not strip-mining that part of culture yet or at all. And that's what this whole rate hike is about.

It's not about getting the artists their fair share. It's about killing off a media form that the
current players don't control, and largely can't control. And I question WHY someone who is involved
with the labels setting the rate for "compulsory licensing"- isn't that kind of bass-ackwards? Shouldn't
an independent party be the one setting that rate?

Re:Meh...

[Gerzel]

The thing is where did you get that music and hear it in the first place?

A lot of these radiostations, offer more than just music, but also commentary and talk. I've heard a lot of artists for the first time on net radio. Some of the songs I've heard over the net are tapes and recordings where the only copy exists at the station itself or are from local artists who don't have big record deals.

Every artist listed in the above post is main stream.

How about Becket and Frenz, Kraftwerk, or atomisk? How about traditional German, African, or any other ethnic music that isn't run through the pop-radio filter?

What is being taken out here are the artists, music and sounds that DON'T often have a record label or that you probably haven't heard of. Good stuff, that deserves to be aired. Granted perhaps most of it doesn't fit the tastes of enough people for it to belong on a major channel, but that doesn't mean it isn't good enough to be played and shared over the radio, either through the spectrum or the wires.

This is an important issue, and if net radio goes down, even if you don't listen. Just wait till they get around to your corner of the net.

Re:Meh...

[ByteGuerrilla]

It's not just a jukebox playing a set of music. There's a DJ, who talks to the listeners, and builds a rapport with them, adding variety and features to the show. That's why drivetime radio in the morning and evening is so popular - people like the DJ as well as the music he's playing. There's also the prospect of being introduced to new music you've never heard before.

I DJ (or rather, I present a show, since I'm not spinning decks) on EVE-Radio, a web radio station for the MMO EVE-Online, and I can tell you that's what people like about the radio. It's amplified, in the case of EVE Radio, as the listeners can actually come into the EVE Radio chat channel and talk with the DJ and other listeners, so it's far more communal than you sat at home, or in the car, tuned into your favourite station. Radio as a whole, offers more variety than just sticking in a CD you burned, or playing from your MP3 library. That's what people like about it, and that's what other people don't like about it.

Re:Meh...

[meatspray]

I'm a systems engineer for a mid sized company. Yes, many people listen to streaming radio.

Though a lot of people these days have easy access to mp3's, many people don't feel that bringing their pirated music to work is a good idea.

Add that to the people who have mp3's but can't justify getting an mp3 player of a adequate size, add in the group that can afford it, justify it, but are simply too lazy to get one and those that are afraid of leaving their players around their desk and you have a booming number of desk workers that dearly love their streaming radio.

With streaming radio, they can pick a station that's non explicit and not have to worry about NIN:Closer blaring out of their speakers while they're headed off to the bathroom.

The price of bandwidth in a big city is ever decreasing so our management has decided that it's better to up the pipe than to cut off the users access.

Personally, I think streaming radio is the devil, it's a constant drain on your internet connection that can grow quickly out of control when you throw a few hundred users at it. People feel strongly about it so when you try to tell a user at a 768K site that they need to have people shut down some streams so they can work, they think you're just being an ass. My personal feelings aside, Something needs to be done to keep streaming radio as healthy as possible. Our legal system has us walking a very narrow path. Stray much from that path and it's a long long way back up to get back to where you were.

Web Radio and new music

[ClaraBow]

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...

Re:Web Radio and new music

[Sentax]

I agree, I've found so much new music on web radio that didn't hit the FM waves for at least another 2-3 months, it was like I was looking into the future. I've DJ'd for 10 years plus and the source for being on top of those new songs was web radio. Call it a keen knack for knowing what songs will work but it seems that I could predict a popular song way before it was popular, then I had it ready to play for people when they ask, all because of Internet Radio... I'm also mad and frustrated.

If the average Joe Internet Radio goes away they we will be flooded with more corporate stations that only play what is hot at the time and insert stupid little adverts in between every two songs and do their station call at the beginning and end of each song. Why?!?!

Hey, just thought of something. Are the Internet Radio station royalties only for American stations? So say your favorite Russian site will soon be the place for that Internet Radio you once heard. It is inevitable.

Everyone sing with me:

[ducomputergeek]

Royalties kill the internet radio star....

begs the question

[bit trollent]

What do nerd libertarians that listen to internet radio think about this?

Only a matter of time

[Warbothong]

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.

Re:Only a matter of time

[MrCopilot]

Doom has been ported to everything in existence, so it was only a matter of time before it became playable on Web Radio.

I know you are joking but, I open Amarok and click Radio, Shoutcast, Game and 40 stations pop up many of which include Doom1,2,3 Level music, in regular rotation.

Not to mention the plethora of sites like http://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/info/music.ph p

Sometimes its comforting.

SOMA FM

[charnov]

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'.

Common new-business problem

[cdrguru]

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.

Re:It's the big media conglomerates, silly....

[Svartalf]

Actually, it's the RIAA labels doing it. SoundExchange charges royalties on behalf of RIAA members and others- it is
the creation of RIAA, in reality. Now, think about it... They largely have control over the media markets through
the means and connections they already have with Radio- but don't have any positive control over anything in the
case of web radio. Very probably never will because the bar to entry is very shallow. Sure it kind of scares the
ClearChannel's of the world, but in the end, it's just another format for them to step into. In the end, they can
compete decently well in that space- but there's still no way to control you or I stepping up to the plate and putting
out stuff that's got NOTHING to do with the labels. Classical. Renaissance. Celtic. And, so forth.

RIAA's members and RIAA themselves do not like that thought at all.

They exist right at the moment to strip mine what we call culture right at the moment. In order for them to maximize
profits (and make the Daytraders happy...) they need to have nearly absolute control on what comes out as usable
music, etc. so that they can extract every dollar they can out of us. Well, so long as people don't realize they're
getting short-changed by these jokers.

Web Radio was helping people find music that the big media conglomerates (You had it right- just the wrong conglomerates)
like Sony BMG, Warner, etc. just have no interest in backing and producing content for- EVER. They don't want that.
Which is why we're here now, discussing this.

The players involved with the compulsory licensing should not be involved in setting the pricing, etc.

Someone that doesn't ever touch content covered by the licensing should not have to pay for it- if they've
got deals with all the performers that are being given "airtime" online, they shouldn't have to pay and if
they break the rules, then they should pay a dear price for that act of infringement.

But, that's not what is going on, now is it?

I've Stopped LIstening To Internet Radio Anyway

[hedkandee]

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.

Net radio is free advertising!

[ZorinLynx]

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.

Re:Net radio is free advertising!

[rantingkitten]

You got all that right. I run a darkwave and futurepop radio station myself and play stuff that most people have never heard of before outside the hazy drunkenness of a goth club somewhere. There are a few groups I have in rotation that have acheived some commercial success, but most of them, despite being signed to labels, are almost totally unknown beyond a pretty tight-knit circle.

I have personally had people email me and tell me they loved such and such song, this or that group, and ended up buying some songs off iTunes or CDs or whatever. I know one guy who attended the VNV Nation concert here in Atlanta, after hearing them on my station. Had he never tuned in he'd never have known who VNV Nation was, but he did, and paid for a ticket. What's that mean for VNV Nation? At least the sale of a ticket, plus whatever swag he may have picked up while he was at the show (shirts, albums, buttons, who knows).

This sort of thing happens all the time. Artists seek out net radio broadcasters and send them free tracks, promo kits, and other stuff to get exposure. I'm not even that big a player as internet radio goes, and I've gotten a bunch of CDs in the mail, mp3s, release kits, promotional tracks, and other goodies. More important broadcasters than I am, they get way more stuff.

And why would the artists do this? Because they want exposure, which is something that's actually pretty hard to buy. You can advertise but people learn to tune out and ignore advertisements pretty quickly, in any medium or format. Or you can just spread the word and let your work speak for itself, which is what the musicians are doing.

The RIAA really is killing off a fantastic source of free advertising, and I can't understand what their problem is. It's not as though anyone refrained from buying music because they can just listen to it on the radio. Hell, most of the music I own, I got because I heard it on the radio and just had to have it.

And it was usually internet radio that brought me to it.

It's all about the DRM folks

[ObjetDart]

Once you understand that, everything SoundExchange is doing makes sense. These seemingly counter-productive actions by SoundExchange lead to a lot of head scratching by a lot of people. Why would the music industry want to kill such a seemingly obvious way to generate more music sales? Etc.

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.

Re:It's all about the DRM folks

[ObjetDart]

It's a compelling story, but I just don't believe that the epic battle of Big Labels vs. independent artists adequately explains what SoundExchange is currently up to. Many of the popular web casters who would be put out of business by the new rates play mostly Big Label music (e.g. Radio Paradise, etc.) Personally, I'm absolutely convinced it is all simply about piracy. The RIAA is hopelessly obsessed with the possibility that anybody, anywhere, could possibly receive a free copy of un-DRM'd music from any source. The fact that SoundExchange offered an exemption to their new rates to those webcasters who agreed to use DRM pretty much cinched it for me.

last.fm

[Virgil Tibbs]

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.

One problem with that theory...

[daBass]

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.