Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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?
This has nothing to do with Capitalism. The Market hasn't spoken, this is about copyright and royalties which is nothing but Government protection of works. Not saying copyright is a bad thing inherently (it is in a bad state if you ask me) but this is nothing but a barrier to entry into the internet radio business. This keeps out the small guy who isn't doing this for money (probably doing it at a loss out of his or her own pocket) and since it's compulsory someone running an internet radio station with just unsigned or independent music will still have to open their wallet to $25,000 a year. This is just a ploy by old media to keep broadcasting in their hands. It won't matter much to the more dedicated of the amateur broadcaster as they can most probably move their operation out of the United States.
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.