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Internet Radio's "Last Stand"
We've been discussing the plight of Internet radio for some time, as the Copyright Royalty Board imposed royalties that industry observers predicted would prove lethal to the nascent industry. We discussed Web radio's day of silence in protest, which won the industry a reprieve, and the futile efforts to find relief in Congress. Now it's looking as if the last act is indeed close. Death Metal Maniac sends along this Washington Post story with extensive quotes from Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, who said: "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money... We're funded by venture capital. They're not going to chase a company whose business model has been broken." The article estimates that XM Satellite Radio will pay "about 1.6 cents per hour per listener when the new rates are fully adapted in 2010. By contrast, Web radio outlets will pay 2.91 cents per hour per listener." That's 70% of projected revenue for Pandora; smaller players estimate the hit at 100% to 300% of revenue.
(I have to pay $0.08 for every person reading this post because of the subject.)
They also need an educational rate for colleges and schools and a non-commercial hobbiest rate for small 'bedroom' Internet stations
The more I follow the story of the fate of internet radio, the more I boggle over the collective stupidity of the Copyright Royalty Board.
By raising the rates, they're practically ensuring that they're not only pissing a lot of people off (almost everyone I know uses Pandora, for instance), but they're taking their revenue stream and choking it to death. Tons of net radio broadcasters are going to be forced to shut down over this, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it means that, despite the increased royalty rates, they actually make far less in fees in the long run. And that goes doubly so for Pandora, which is one of the best ways I've seen for music fans to find new artists and new styles of music they may never have considered before. So much for that revenue-boosting avenue.
I just don't understand why shareholders of the major record companies don't revolt. These jokers in charge seem dead set on destroying the "industry". Boneheaded moves like trying to keep new music away from listeners is just asinine. Radio is how many people find new (or old) songs for the first time. Clearly net radio is a huge market, why shoot themselves in the foot in the name of short term greed.
What if I'm the owner of an internet radio station that plays only music that has become public domain through the consent of the owner or the expiration of copyrights?
Or perhaps I only like to play songs by artists who sell their CD's for less than the industry standard. Say, $5 a CD. Will my fees be lessened?
The artists really need to get involved. Laws like this are taking away more revenue than they are generating. For example, last.fm will recommend a group based on what I've been listening to. More often than not, I will listen to more of that group's music. If I like it, I find out if they are coming to a venue nearby. I go to the show and buy merchandise, because I know that's the best way to get money into the right hands.
It's kind of what I imagine FM radio used to be, but we all know what happened to that.
Remember that Internet radio's rates are almost TWICE as high as satellite's. The only thing I can come up with is that SoundExchange WANTS to put Internet radio out of business for some reason-that's the reason they're setting rates as high as they are!
before you die? I started listening to Internet radio seven months ago. Since then, I haven't listened to my MP3 collection at all, or been on any file sharing networks to expand it.
...and now they want me to go back to my MP3 collection? Surely, they're not dumb enough to believe that I'll go back to Clear Channel? Right?
I've been exposed to and promoted countless new bands that I never would have heard of on my own.
In pure capitalism, the MAFIAA would have long been driven out of business. But they are doing something they should not be allowed to do: interfering in the government, buying laws for themselves.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Ah well, back to piracy for me.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
They'll claim that there will still be "radio" on the internet offered from regular radio stations. However, that is only a gimmick and advertising to promote another separate business (the original radio station), and means that an entire industry is being destroyed.
This move makes no sense other than to "test the waters" to see how far they can push business before they go bust.
*US based* internet radio's last stand...
Don't forget... In the free world US laws do not apply...
--frank[at]unternet.org
You know, it seems that we need to try to take lessons maybe from the Pirate Radio stations of the past and present that operate on the fringe, or in areas untouchable by the powers that be.
Too bad we can't do some kind of distributable P2P type application, that would allow anyone to run streaming music/video into the ether....but, is untraceable as to origin. Some type of freenet type thing for streaming content. That way, anyone could set up a Pirate Internet Radio Station (PIRS ?).
Is anything like this possible I wonder?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What we see in the US is not capitalism, it is corpratism, an unholy alliance between large corporations and the government. This is why you see laws created to make more profit for large companies, and bail outs from the government to large companies who lose a substation amount of capital due to bad business practices.
If we had real capitalism in this country, even capitalism with regulated markets (you know, laws to live by, like every other Individual has to follow) we would have a lot more innovation and new industries would rise up over night because they do not have to contend with being killed in the crib by a new law passed to favor established markets.
Ah, that's the Dark Side of greed.
The Light Side of greed sparks innovation because folks have an incentive to make money by creating something new.
The Dark Side always goes after the weak: the ones that can't innovate. It promises easy money, high barriers to entry with laws and regulations, keeping the status quo. Some greed masters like Masters Jobs and Wozniak break into a field of greed. They, being great greed masters, broke IBM along with another, though maligned greed master, Gates. But even then, The Dark Side can even ake the best of us as it did Master Gates. He seams to be coming back to the Light Side with his charity work.
Pay heed young greed patiwan, the Dark Side is always there for the lazy!
You're confusing profit with revenue.
Profit is what is left over after you pay for servers and bandwidth and salaries and everything else.
Revenue is what you take in before you've payed for all of that.
The fees are hitting 70% of the REVENUE.
There is a point when trying to fight the society with it's own rules is futile.
Think about what this sick society orders you: You have to believe in stupid jesus, you can't smoke pot, you can't have privacy, you can't listen to music, Save on your energy use so the big industries can have more oil for them, You can't say shit on tv, blah blah blah!!!
B U L L S H I T.
Screw them, most of what we do daily to maintain some level of freedom in our lives is illegal. If you really abide by all the rules, pay all the taxes, and stick to stupid society's moral rules, YOU ARE NOT ALIVE, you become a Zombie.
I'll sniff, drink, believe, take, download, copy, share, do, read, write, think, say, modify, film and build WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
When laws are passed that drive a company out of business because it's no longer economical to consume their product (internet radio), that really is the government and not the consumer's fault. When a transaction is taxed for more than anyone is willing to pay for it, it stops happening legally.
This is just yet another example of how the current copyright regime is prima facia unconstitutional.
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
Copyright is not a property right; copyright is an agreement between the public and authors & inventors creating a privilege of limited exclusive right as incentive for dissemination of ideas because otherwise authors & inventors have only the choice of keeping their inventions secret or sharing them that the recipient does what he or she will with the information without limitation, which is the natural right of the recipient.
Any mechanism of securing exclusive right to the author or inventor must meet two tests to be constitutional:
An attempt was made to test the absurdly long exclusive term against the "limited" requirement and that failed because any finite term is by definition limited.
The test that must now be made is against the requirement that copyright laws "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." The burden of proof should be on demonstrating that the laws do promote the progress of science and the useful arts because copyright is a limitation on the rights of the public and therefore intrinsically a burden on society. In granting copyright society temporarily yields their natural right to a privilege offered authors & inventors, a privilege that may be revoked at any time.
Current copyright laws do not pass the test of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts; they are a burden on innovation and have systematically retarded the progress of science and technology, strangling many significant innovations, once again with internet radio. Current copyright laws are therefore unconstitutional.
The difference is, the RIAA is not a normal business. If I refuse to eat at a restaurant and a bunch of like minded people do to, chances are it will go out of business. When people boycott the RIAA they see it as a loss and think OMG PIRACY!!1!111! and use that as an excuse to pass more draconian laws.
Sure, after a long time (50 years or so) the RIAA will be bankrupt and disband, but not before taking the US and any other "free" country to 1984.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/
All the FM stations got bought out by Clearchannel and other conglomerates, and they all play the same songs broadcast from a central location. No more local DJs, no more local news, no more local weather, no more local music.
FM radio puts an emphasis on back catalog - rarely is there any new music that appeals to me. I do not care for hip hop, rap, etc. There is no variety in music, and there is a lot of music out there (esp independent labels) that is not getting played on FM radio.
Payola has pushed the independents out of FM radio. Nobody wants to admit that there is a white elephant in the room. Because the radio conglomerates have gotten greedy, the music variety suffers.
The obesity of advertising - way too much of it - has driven listeners away from FM radio. They are tired of the high ad-to-program ratio of program time. Radio conglomerates got too greedy when they consolidated all the FM stations and then tried to raise revenue through advertising.
The end result is a mass exodus of listeners away from FM radio. Many of my friends no longer listen to radio and they listen to songs on their ipods, their mp3 car radios, their internet radios, etc.
Independent labels found an outlet through internet radio and former FM radio listeners are embracing it enthusiastically. The FM radio lobby is extremely powerful and they conspired to use the royalty fees to drive the internet radio out of the market. That is not how capitalism is supposed to work.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10