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Experimental Fees Settle Royalty War For Internet Radio
S-100 writes "SoundExchange has reached an agreement for royalty rates with a consortium of Internet radio broadcasters. The parties are ecstatic that the issue is finally resolved, and that the new rates are below the previous 'death to Internet radio' levels that had previously been imposed by the CARB. According to NewsFactor, Pandora founder Tim Westergren proclaims that 'the royalty crisis is over!', and other large broadcasters are equally pleased. One unheard-from group is less likely to be pleased: small Internet radio broadcasters. Buried in the details are a new minimum royalty payment: $25,000 per year. So say goodbye to all of the small Internet radio stations that you have been listening to, as they will no longer afford to operate legally."
The rich take advantage of the less rich:
"Buried in the details are a new minimum royalty payment: $25,000 per year. So say goodbye to all of the small Internet radio stations that you have been listening to, as they will no longer afford to operate legally."
Just theoretically, what if a station played only music in the public domain? Would they have to cough up the minimum payment? I'm curious whether the fee is for playing music over the internet, or for playing copyrighted music over the internet.
12:50 - press return.
In the USA maybe. I have a suspicion other countries might have a different notion of how that might work out...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Does this only pertain to the US, or is it all over the world?
Pandora is starting to sound a lot like regular ClearChannel FM. Funny how that happens.
Not only does this new deal not cover every country (the Internet has this global presence to it) but this new deal doesn't cover all music which is legally redistributable in the US. Support artists who aren't signing their copyrights away to the huge few corporate labels, support musicians who share with you under terms that allow you to share further, and you'll find there's a lot of good music out there to be enjoyed. Small radio stations would do well to stop trying to emulate the major radio stations and develop audiences that appreciate something different and new.
Digital Citizen
Pandora is basically in the pocketbooks of the RIAA. Pandora is no longer the small "fight for your rights to listen to music as you wish" radio station, but rather the MS of internet radio. What Pandora calls a win for internet radio, is the same as Ballmer calling something a win for operating systems. They only see themselves and one competitor. Pandora wants all the small stations (and Last.FM) to die as much as Ballmer wants Linux and OS X to die.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Nobody makes music free, son.
SOMEONE stole it from my music empire.
Are you referring to the mathematical near-certainty that a song's hook will inevitably match that of at least one of the millions of songs in BMI and ASCAP's repertory? Or the precedent set in Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music that accidentally copying the hook of a song heard a half-decade ago is just as much a copyright infringement as what happens in the warez scene? Or both?
Why are we all so busy blaming Pandora for this?
IIRC, they were just trying to save themselves from getting annihilated by these preposterous fees... and now we're giving them a hard time because they didn't save every other tiny internet radio station all at once?
Seems to me that we won the battle, but not the war (yet). So let's celebrate that instead of flagellating those fighting on our side, yeah?
I'd like to see how you think a WMG lawyer would defeat reliance on a CC license.
Simply by taking them to court you can crush a lot of small stations. When given the option of A) shutting down and WMG will waive the fee B) paying some sort of large (but not huge) fee like $5000 or C) being sued for $50000+. Most stations, especially those ran by individuals in their spare time would simply choose to shut down. The fee could cause a sharp increase in operating costs so the "ad free" station suddenly has more ads then terrestrial radio. If they go to court, they might keep operating for some time, but eventually the court costs could drain their operating costs budget to where they can't afford it. Even if the internet radio people win, they still lose.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Yeah, except it hasn't happened yet and there's already been plenty of reasons to not listen to mainstream label music.
The main reason probably being that 99% of indie music really really sucks, and people don't want to have to look for that 1%.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I don't know if you've noticed, but 99% of commercial music sucks, too. It just has better marketing.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I you were a starting entrepreneur who wanted to become one of those large internet radio stations some day your view might be different. Artificially high barriers of entry into an industry are rarely beneficial to society. From a purely economic standpoint, competition is generally a good thing.
According to NewsFactor, Pandora founder Tim Westergren proclaims that 'the royalty crisis is over, and we don't have to worry about any small competitors sneaking up and taking our business!'. I may have added that last part, but I'm sure he was thinking it. Like most regulations, it serves mainly to fuck small business and eliminate competition.
1. This isn't a regulation, it's a cartel whose licensing terms are enforced by [government]
2. And this $25K business sounds ripe for anti-trust investigation. How is it not abuse of a monopoly position?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It takes more than a beat to make good music.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The point of traditional radio stations is to cover costs (and preferably make a profit) with revenue from advertisers by distributing their material to the populace. The populace generally isn't interested in listening to advertisements all day long, so the radio stations must provide material the populace is interested in, with advertisements thrown in periodically. Range "Y" is an artifact of radio broadcasting and power limitations imposed by the FCC to allow wider use of radio spectrum. I agree that the internet's nearly infinite supply of spectrum eliminates the need for any kind of range limitations. Genre "X" limitations are similarly a radio spectrum issue and need not exist on the internet.
Try turning that around: "What can the large one offer that the smaller one cannot if they are both free?" Really, I would expect a larger entity to develop into a far more bureaucratic system, making it slow to respond to listener's changing interests and requests. Further, large entities are somewhat resilient to legal action and more difficult to reconstruct, making them more easily controlled by external parties such as large copyright holders. Such legal action on a small entity would likely crush it, but a new one could quickly sprout up in the hole left by the original. Going back to the original question: "What can the small one offer that the larger cannot i they are both free?" Simply put, adaptability and resistance against external corruption. These qualities do not mesh well with the music industry's legacy business model, thus the attempt to eliminate them with a $25,000 minimum charge. I would be interested to see what kind of logical knots they try to tie in their attempts to defend this minimum.
For some cases you are obviously correct.
However in the case of the smaller stations this can be a daunting if not insurmountable price.
Consider, a station which plays primarily alternative music sources, but plays *one song* from the RIAA catalog, once, in a year. Still out $25k for that one song.
The pricing structure is clearly designed to exclude smaller and/or less mainstream stations.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
According to NewsFactor, Pandora founder Tim Westergren proclaims that 'the royalty crisis is over, and we don't have to worry about any small competitors sneaking up and taking our business!'. I may have added that last part, but I'm sure he was thinking it. Like most regulations, it serves mainly to fuck small business and eliminate competition.
1. This isn't a regulation, it's a cartel whose licensing terms are enforced by [government]
2. And this $25K business sounds ripe for anti-trust investigation. How is it not abuse of a monopoly position?
That's easy.
Because many of the same people who were instrumental in putting this in place and that stand to gain from it also just happen to be the ones that would also be instrumental in deciding if it's fair or not.
Wagers on their decision?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If they fail to do so (and they're likely to fail if they're suing on false pretenses), then they're the ones who end up paying your court costs.
And if I de of old age before they actually give up trying its a Pyrrhic victory. Just look at SCO vs IBM... if IBM were an individual person instead of the massive corporation it is, SCO would have one simply by wearing them down into insolvency.
I'm curious, why do you consider Pandora to be on *our* side? I haven't followed this situation closely, but it seems to me they've only done their best to stay afloat and nothing else. That's to be expected from any business, but it isn't something to be praised either.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Who says that an agreement between one set of parties binds others who were not party to the agreement? I fail to see how an agreement between certain parties in this mess affects other parties who are not signatory to the agreement. That doesn't make any sense.
I bet the only reason it got cheaper now, is because those "big" radios finally bought into Payola.
For $25,000 they now can play everything they want, as long as it's what the RIAA tells them to play.
Luckily, I and my Internet radios never cared, and never will!
Some of them are even illegal by government rules (like the idiotic UK laws), which makes them real analog "pirate" radios too!
But I either listen to them or to my mp3s. I could never go back to that pop shit that is "normal" radio stations. My musical knowledge of rare bands of the UK, Russia, Japan, UK, France, etc, grew massively since I listen to Internet radio. To me it's the second most important killer feature of the Internet. Right after porn!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Because the publisher, who actually paid you real money for the rights to your music, will contractuallly not agree to much if you retain the right to exclusively license to others. Instead, you'll just stay unknown.
the more potential working business models will slip through your fingers.
Innovation is made possible by lowering barriers to entry, not raising them.