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RIAA and Net Radio Broadcasters Reach Agreement

Posted by samzenpus on from the pay-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The RIAA and internet web broadcasters have reached a royalty agreement. Instead of facing massive increases per song played, they will be generally charged 10.5% of their yearly revenue."

2 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Turn their own tactics on to them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We've all heard about RIAA tricks to scam the artists out of their fair share. Like taking a percentage of revenues for 'breakage' based on the rates of vinyl records breaking in shipping even though CDs are much more sturdy and MP3 downloads are impervious.

    So I suggest the radio stations change their business models to run revenue-free. Like becoming an ancilliary service that does not generate revenue under normal conditions - like you can pay a fee so outrageous for the radio service that no one in their right mind will pay it, or you can get it 'free' as part of membership (paid or advertising-supported, or some other scheme) with some other web-site or service provider. Let the free-radio and the revenue-generating service be subsidiaries of the same parent company and you are all set.

    Of course I am writing this without actually reading the details of the contracts - those MAFIAA lawyers are really good at putting together contracts that fuck the other guy in novel and unexpected ways, so anybody trying to fuck them back needs to pay real close attention to the details.

  2. About time by Auckerman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Profit motive is a fascinating thing. It's not in the RIAA's best interest for web radio stations to go offline, because they generate no money from web radio that way. Whatever they charge is going to be the highest possible without alienating their customer base, which is the web broadcasters. It took them long enough to finally admit that their pricing was extraordinary to say the least.

    I do find it fascinating that the major labels, via "Independent promotors" actually pay radio stations to broadcast specific songs, whereas they do no such thing for web radio services. I would think that something like the web radio in iTunes would be a perfect target for this.

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    Burn Hollywood Burn