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."
A big reason that traditional radio stations are in the hands of conglomerates only is because the cost of the antenna, broadcast equipment, and the scarcity of available frequency makes it extremely expensive to start a new terrestrial radio station. A Net radio station only needs a Net connection and some open source applications. The 25K means individuals are no longer able to run a free Net radio station. It will also knock out college radio stations who simultaneously stream the terrestrial broadcasts they deliver for no fee. Hobby Net radio is dead in this country. Of course, the agreement only applies to the US so overseas folk can pick up the slack...for now. A shame really and not the win Pandora calls it. It just helps the mid-sized VC-funded
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've been listening to pandora since it came out - I'm a huge fan. I got this email yesterday... pretty interesting. Apparently I like their free service *too* much:
I hope this email finds you enjoying a great summer Pandora soundtrack.
I'm writing with some important news. Please forgive the lengthy email; it requires some explaining.
First, I want to let you know that we've reached a resolution to the calamitous Internet radio royalty ruling of 2007. After more than two precarious years, we are finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates â" thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our listeners who voiced an absolute avalanche of support for us on Capitol Hill. We are deeply thankful.
While we did the best we could to lower the rates, we are going to have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners. Specifically, we are going to begin limiting listening to 40 hours per month on the web. Because we have to pay royalty fees per song and per listener, it makes very heavy listeners hard to support on advertising alone. Most listeners will never hit this cap, but it seems that you might.
We hate the idea of capping anyone's usage, so we've been working to devise an alternative for listeners like you. We've come up with two solutions and we hope that one of them will work for you:
Your first option is to continue listening just as you have been and, if and when you reach the 40 hour limit in a given month, to pay just $0.99 for unlimited listening for the rest of that month. This isn't a subscription. You can pay by credit card and your card will be charged for just that one month. You'll be able to keep listening as much as you'd like for the remainder of the month. We hope this is relatively painless and affordable - the same price as a single song download.
Your second option is to upgrade to our premium version called Pandora One. Pandora One costs $36 per year. In addition to unlimited monthly listening and no advertising, Pandora One offers very high quality 192 Kbps streams, an elegant desktop application that eliminates the need for a browser, personalized skins for the Pandora player, and a number of other features: http://www.pandora.com/pandora_one.
If neither of these options works for you, I hope you'll keep listening to the free version - 40 hours each month will go a long way, especially if you're really careful about hitting pause when youâ(TM)re not listening. Weâ(TM)ll be sure to let you know if you start getting close to the limit, and weâ(TM)ve created a counter you can access to see how many hours youâ(TM)ve already used each month.
Weâ(TM)ll be implementing this change starting this month (July), Iâ(TM)d welcome your feedback and suggestions. The combination of our usage patterns and the "per song per listener" royalty cost creates a financial reality that we can't ignore...but we very much want you to continue listening for years to come.
Some way to stream anonymously...P2P style, but untraceable? A freenet type thing for pirate internet radio, and that way, ANYONE could broadcast. Not a way really to make money, but, if someone wants to play DJ. You could set up nym email accounts, and communicate with your public, and still avoid identification.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is probably the most important (and most likely to be overlooked) point in the whole issue. Artists cannot opt-out. Even artists who have never heard of SoundExchange and have never received a check *from* them are generating revenue *for* them.
This might just be a good issue around which to construct a test case for the judicial system. With good legal counsel close at hand, create a station which exclusively plays content that is offered under a suitably free license (http://openmusic.linuxtag.org/, http://www.danosongs.com/, insert your better suggestion ___ here), or where your station has a separate agreement with the artist, or where the artist is not receiving royalties from SoundExchange (and perhaps thinks he/she should be on the basis that SE has collected them from broadcasters).
Publicize, grow, attract attention belligerently.
SoundExchange *seems* to claim to represent all of these scenarios under the "no opting out" doctrine. There is no music "outside of their catalog" as they have no catalog, just an "all your music are belong to us" clause.
In the first two cases, open licenses and individual agreements *should* trump SE's doctrine. If so, then it's time to set about creating a clearinghouse method for mass producing "individual" agreements.
In the third case, SE is ripping off artists in a sense, and shouldn't be able to get away with it. Many small indie artists haven't a clue about SE or how to get royalties from them. Yet SE *keeps* royalties for artists who don't know how to claim them. Existing under a "no opt out" charter is reason enough that the onus should be on SE to notify artists & rightsholders of royalties they have coming.
Pi Ran Out
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.
Slashdot Error: The minimum is $500, not $25,000, as the Slashdot story says. In all these years, the company that owns Slashdot has not learned the basic elements of editing.
I assumed, in my grandparent comment, that the Slashdot story was correct, and was shocked at the amount.
This government PDF file seems to say $500, also: Final Determination Of Rates And Terms, Docket No. 2005-1 CRB DTRA (PDF) Quote: "(b) Minimum fee. Each Commercial Webcaster and Noncommercial Webcaster will pay an annual, nonrefundable minimum fee of $500 for each calendar year or part of a calendar year of the license period during which they are Licensees pursuant to licenses under 17 U.S.C. 114."