Virtually all stations re-encode the stream from their source material. The source may be anything from a WAV or AIFF file to a 128k or slower MP3, which then goes through an AGC and possibly a compressor/limiter, the songs are segued together and then it gets re-encoded.
So a stream ripped 128k track is going to have a lot more artifacts than an original MP3.
Also, as most stations segue their music you're going to not get clean starts and ends on your songs.
Finally, it all depends on how often the stations updates the meta info inthe stream for the streamripper to split the tracks. For example, the latest version shoutcast reduced the metadata frequency from 8 seconds to 30 second intervals.
Do not confuse the multiple copyrights that make up a song.
There is the copyright on the musical composition AND the copyright on the sound recording.
Musical compositions are licensed by BMI, ASCAP and SESAC in the US, and there are compuslory rates paid by all venues that play any kind of music.
Sound recordings are licensed by Sound Exchange (for compulsories- e.g. satellite radio and webcasting) and by the copyright owner (usually the record company) for other uses (e.g. sampling).
Cover bands are not dirivative works. Cover bands are allowed to perform the copyrighted material created by a composer, but the composer gets paid through the monies collected by BMI, ASCAP and SESAC.
No paperwork is required for a band performing a cover live.
Recording those covers is a different issue, but still there are statutory rates of 7.5 cents per song per record. Some paperwork is required.
Apple could likely make more money in the long run by building overseas production and distribution capabilitie
I hate to tell you this but they're already made in Asia. No one builds their own factories anymore, they all use "Contract Manufacturers" so they can scale up or down easily without worrying about fixed factory investments!
When I got my iPod, it was shipped from Malaysia (or maybe Singapore?).
Radio is all about getting your audience to imagine things. If you saw how ugly most radio hosts are, or what disgusting studios that they have to do their shows from, you'd think they were lying all the time.
Radio is called "Theater of the Mind." Radio hosts are actors. They're creating visuals in your mind. Of course they use technology and special effects.
For example, in Los Angeles, in the old days the top 2 news radio channels had sound effects of teletype machines running in the background. Just about every radio station in a major market has an Eventide Harminizor, a made for radio effects box which has a "traffic helicopter" effect preset.
Don't confuse making good radio with making cheap radio. The latter is when an Infinity or CC fires 90% of the local staff and has a central studio do voice tracking for 10 different stations in 10 different cities.
Next we'll be slagging Howard Stern for not telling the whole truth all the time!
Those of us who are serious internet broadcasters have quite good uptime. And the downtime we have is easily fixed by spending a little extra money - like having backup playback workstations and using T1s instead of DSL to feed our stream repeaters.
For example, SomaFM runs several of our channels with OtsDJ, an inexpensive but quite capable and professional broadcast playback and stream encoding solution. These instances often have uptime of 60-90 days between restarts, so reliability there is not a problem.
The majority of our downtime comes from the SDSL line that we use to feed the stream repeaters from our studio. If we spent $1500 a month more and put a pair of T1s in a failover config. The rest of our outages come from ISP peering problems, where one of our stream repeaters is seeing a lot of packet loss from it's feeder.
We have UPS power that will run the machines and network at the studio for over an hour, and for $5000 could put in a generator with auto start and a auto transfer switch.
As far as getting the audio back to the Sat providers head end, we could do one of several things: use a Harris Intraplex and a frame relay circuit or just install one of their encoders here connected by an ISDN or fractional T1 frame relay private network. (Most sat channels are 80kb/sec or less,)
It's not rocket science to make an "internet class" radio station as reliable as a commercial over the air station.
We've had on and off discussions with XM and Sirius in the past, but they're not interested in carrying us. I was happy that they had heard of us, and they did offer to consider a weekly 2 hour "show" that they would put on their "dance" channel... but that doesn't seem to worth it for us.
A friend has an old iBook running OSX that rarely needs to be rebooted and runs 24x7. I think the last time he rebooted it was to upgrade OSX. Oh and the time there was a 12 hour power outage... the battery only works as a 3-4 hour UPS.:-)
All those generators that businesses put in to provide power during blackouts are designed (and licensed / permitted / zoned) as backup units, not to be run fulltime.
Aside from the fact that most of them don't have enough fuel to run for more than 48 hours, and it's hard to get fuel delivered during a big blackout like the NE one.
This was a question we always asked our colo vendors who boasted 48 hours of generator fuel. What happens if it is a big earthquake with widespread outages? "We'll get it trucked in." What if the roads are blocked? Level 3 told us - we have a dock on the side of the building and will have a barge in here making fuel deliveries. When I asked about how they'd get the drawbridge up which blocks access to their dock, they were flustered and started talking about long hoses.
But the fact is, all those generators are designed to run for short periods of time - usually less than a few hours. They're not designed/planned for longterm widespread outages.
THe smart installations will have "excerciser timer" which fire up the unit once a week for 10 minutes or so, as well as remote monitoring for low oil levels and such. But that costs extra, so lots of places didn't bother with that part.
I'm paying about $0.25 a kw/h. My electric bill has tripled since 1999. Part of the way this was done was in the "baseline amount". You still get a really tiny amount of electricity real cheap, but over that, you're paying a lot.
I can generate 1000 watts for 24 hours for about 3 gallons of gas with my honda generator. That's $6 for 24kwh, or $0.25 a kw/hour. Surely, I should be able to get electricity substantially cheaper from a professionally run utility?
Your ears have different frequency response curves depending on where the sound is coming from. Add to that the phase differences and distortion the shape of the ear adds to sound, and you can fake a sound to make it sound like its coming from different places. This is the basis of the SRS audio system, and similar systems such as Roland Space Sound (RSS) and Bob Carver's old 1980s Sonic Holigraphy.
Why does everyone think that going public is the only way to be successful? All google really needs to do is give a good return to their VCs. They can possibly do that and stay private. There are lots of good reasons for staying private.
I just want to clarify that SomaFM is not a 501(c)3 Nonprofit corporation. We don't bring in that much money and can't afford to hire the accountants to audit our books. However, we are commercial free, although we do have links to Amazon.com which we receive a (small) commission from, and a few other companies from time to time which we link the web site to for other affiliate fees.
SomaFM is run like a non-profit though. All our revenue (90% which is donations) goes into the actual costs of running the station, any surplus funds go towards expanding our programming and accessibility.
It would be great to be a real 501(c)3 nonprofit corp, and hopefully some day we can achieve that status. Then I could get a big-ass salary like the head of United Way or all those other charities do.
(Just kidding about the big-ass salary! But I would like SomaFM to be successful enough that I could do it as my only job.)
Hon Hai replaces LG as sole supplier of Apple's iMac/eMac PCs - report
TAIPEI (AFX-ASIA) - Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (2317.TW) has replaced LG Electronics Co as the sole supplier of Apple Computer Inc's iMac/eMac desktop PCs, with 2003 shipments estimated at up to 1.0 mln units, the Economic Daily News reported without citing a source.
The ruling was about playing music not about playing the radio, although it would encompass radio. Not all radio is supported by commercials, especially in Europe.
And this ruling will do nothing to stop them from listening to news programming, or other non-music programming.
And the ruling will not prevent musician taxi drivers from playing the music that they themselves own the copyright to.
Royalty fees for public performance of radio and TV broadcasts go way way back, this is nothing new. The only thing new is that this ruling states that taxis are indeed public spaces, just like bars, restaurants, and stores.
By the way, if you think you can show commercial TV in a public place without permission, call DirecTV or your local cable company, and try to get it installed into your bar, restaurant or store. You'll find it costs a whole lot more than installing into your home, and the prices vary by the size of your establishment.
PS- I wasn't arguing what was ethical, just what was the law.
Anytime you use music (that you don't own the rights to) in a business environment, you have to pay. This includes if you play the radio in a retail store or other business, or if you have music on hold, etc.
This is because it's considered a public performance.
In the US, most businesses are using music services like Muzak, AEI (now part of DMX) or others which include the royalty fees as part of their service fees.
Should cab drivers be allowed to show movies in their cabs? What about a bar? If you think they should be allowed to without paying any royalties, then why shouldn't I be allowed to open my own second run movie house with a video projector and lots of DVDs?
In reality, it wasn't really Jesse Helms, it was his congressional staffers. It was all part of politics, and Jesse himself probably doesn't even give a damn one way or the other, but his office does.
Helm's staffers were really interested in making this change, and went to great lengths to come up with a compromise that could be pushed through a lame duck session.
Frankly, I thought the bill would be dead. I'm impressed with the political acumen of Jesse's staff. (And now, with the passage of this with their amendments, it's a feather in their cap)
When you get inside Washington politics, it's more and more like a game and less and less like reality.
Most copyrights of the SOUND RECORDINGS of classical music are held by RIAA member labels or their affiliates.
Remember folks, we're not talking about the composers. We're talking about who owns the sound recordings, made by the conductor and the musicians who played on that recording.
Classical music is not an RIAA alternative, unless you are buying some of those Costco CDs released by eastern eurpoean orchestras (which are also copyrighted).
Just because it's non-RIAA music doesn't mean it's not covered by the DMCA and is exempt from CARP fees.
The DMCA authorized SoundExchange to collect royalties on behalf of ALL copyright owners. So unless you don't have explicit permission to play the recording (aka a "waiver") and the recording is not in the public domain, you have to pay SoundExchange (a division of the RIAA).
they're also trying to prevent one from self-broadcasting their *own* music
No, that's not correct at all. The copyright holder still can do whatever he wants with that copyright, including allow downloads and broadcast it over internet radio.
The only way you're prevented from broadcasting your own music is if you signed a record deal and granted the recording copyrights to a record company (or created the recording as a work for hire for them).
If you retain all your own copyrights, you can broadcast your music all you want. You can even grant waivers to other broadcast stations that will allow them to play your music without paying for it.
The only problem is, if you music is really good and has gotten some exposure, a label will usually try and buy the rights to it. Sometimes these labels want exclusive rights, and they don't like the fact that you've granted waivers to internet stations, and as part of buying the rights to your music will insist that the waiver to the net radio station be rescinded. Which sucks for web radio, and is why a lot of independent webcasters who play mostly indie music have had to start paying CARP royalties on music they've already been playing rotalty free (and with permission) for a long time.
Your assumptions that is someone tunes in for a fraction of a second will be counted as a listener session is incorrect. See here:
http://www.copyright.gov/carp/webcast_regs.html
The Register notes, however, that the Webcasters' concerns regarding the Panel's determination not to grant its request to impose no royalty on songs less than 30 seconds in duration are ameliorated for the current licensing period. Under the proposed terms of payment, a service may estimate the number of performances for purposes of determining the extent of copyright liability on an "Aggregate Tuning Hour" basis, which calculates payment on the basis of 15 performances per hour.32 The Webcasters had advocated the use of "Aggregated Tuning Hours" as a way to address their concerns regarding the Panel's decision not to provide a lower rate for partial performances. Webcasters Petiton at 71-72. Their argument, however, is not the bases for the Register's recommendation to provide for use of the estimation methodology throughout the license period.
The Register is proposing this course of action in the short term merely to address separate concerns of the Register regarding the logistics involved in reporting the number of performances of sound recordings. This recommendation on the part of the Register should in no way be construed as undermining the Panel's decision that transmissions of sound recordings of less than 30 seconds are compensable.
Close This approach alleviates a Licensee's obligation to account for and pay for each performance, including those that are less than 30 seconds in duration.
This rant (no pun intended) about SomaFM's expenses is kind of off the topic.
But if anyone would like to know the details on what it costs to run SomaFM (with 10 channels, and we have 12 ready to go if we can get back on the air), drop me an email. I'll be happy to discuss it. rusty at somafm dot com.
The $20,000 number was a projection, based on raising $8,000 in the first 6 months of 2002. We haven't raised $20,000 in a year yet - maybe someday we will. SomaFM has raised $25,000 total during our entire lifetime - We went on the 'air' in '99.
Why do you say that $$$ signs are all I see now? SomaFM would have to bring in a lot more than $20,000 in order for me to make any money off it! And you know what? I wold LOVE IT if SomaFM could be my full time job! Why wouldn't I? But that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
So I run SomaFM as if it were a non-profit business. And I do run it as a business, because I want it to be sustainable. Ideally, I would like to see it become a true 501(c)3 non profit. But we'd need to be bringing in a lot more money to make that a reality. (The accountant and auditor costs, corporate tax fees, and all that other crap you need to be a 501(c)3 corp, mean that it will be a long while before we can do that.)
That would be ASCAP/BMI busting them, not the RIAA. There is no sound recording royalty for playing the radio or records in a public place. Do you do have to pay the royalty for the musical composition, and that's what ASCAP and BMI collects.
There are 2 different royalties that webcasters have to pay.
And ASCAP and BMI haven't noticed 90% of the webcasters listed on Shoutcast.com.
Slashdot Mirror
Virtually all stations re-encode the stream from their source material. The source may be anything from a WAV or AIFF file to a 128k or slower MP3, which then goes through an AGC and possibly a compressor/limiter, the songs are segued together and then it gets re-encoded.
So a stream ripped 128k track is going to have a lot more artifacts than an original MP3.
Also, as most stations segue their music you're going to not get clean starts and ends on your songs.
Finally, it all depends on how often the stations updates the meta info inthe stream for the streamripper to split the tracks. For example, the latest version shoutcast reduced the metadata frequency from 8 seconds to 30 second intervals.
Do not confuse the multiple copyrights that make up a song.
There is the copyright on the musical composition AND the copyright on the sound recording.
Musical compositions are licensed by BMI, ASCAP and SESAC in the US, and there are compuslory rates paid by all venues that play any kind of music.
Sound recordings are licensed by Sound Exchange (for compulsories- e.g. satellite radio and webcasting) and by the copyright owner (usually the record company) for other uses (e.g. sampling).
Cover bands are not dirivative works. Cover bands are allowed to perform the copyrighted material created by a composer, but the composer gets paid through the monies collected by BMI, ASCAP and SESAC.
No paperwork is required for a band performing a cover live.
Recording those covers is a different issue, but still there are statutory rates of 7.5 cents per song per record. Some paperwork is required.
AAC sounds better than OGG at the same bitrates.
Apple could likely make more money in the long run by building overseas production and distribution capabilitie
I hate to tell you this but they're already made in Asia. No one builds their own factories anymore, they all use "Contract Manufacturers" so they can scale up or down easily without worrying about fixed factory investments!
When I got my iPod, it was shipped from Malaysia (or maybe Singapore?).
Radio is all about getting your audience to imagine things. If you saw how ugly most radio hosts are, or what disgusting studios that they have to do their shows from, you'd think they were lying all the time.
Radio is called "Theater of the Mind." Radio hosts are actors. They're creating visuals in your mind. Of course they use technology and special effects.
For example, in Los Angeles, in the old days the top 2 news radio channels had sound effects of teletype machines running in the background. Just about every radio station in a major market has an Eventide Harminizor, a made for radio effects box which has a "traffic helicopter" effect preset.
Don't confuse making good radio with making cheap radio. The latter is when an Infinity or CC fires 90% of the local staff and has a central studio do voice tracking for 10 different stations in 10 different cities.
Next we'll be slagging Howard Stern for not telling the whole truth all the time!
Those of us who are serious internet broadcasters have quite good uptime. And the downtime we have is easily fixed by spending a little extra money - like having backup playback workstations and using T1s instead of DSL to feed our stream repeaters.
For example, SomaFM runs several of our channels with OtsDJ, an inexpensive but quite capable and professional broadcast playback and stream encoding solution. These instances often have uptime of 60-90 days between restarts, so reliability there is not a problem.
The majority of our downtime comes from the SDSL line that we use to feed the stream repeaters from our studio. If we spent $1500 a month more and put a pair of T1s in a failover config. The rest of our outages come from ISP peering problems, where one of our stream repeaters is seeing a lot of packet loss from it's feeder.
We have UPS power that will run the machines and network at the studio for over an hour, and for $5000 could put in a generator with auto start and a auto transfer switch.
As far as getting the audio back to the Sat providers head end, we could do one of several things: use a Harris Intraplex and a frame relay circuit or just install one of their encoders here connected by an ISDN or fractional T1 frame relay private network. (Most sat channels are 80kb/sec or less,)
It's not rocket science to make an "internet class" radio station as reliable as a commercial over the air station.
-rusty/somafm
We've had on and off discussions with XM and Sirius in the past, but they're not interested in carrying us. I was happy that they had heard of us, and they did offer to consider a weekly 2 hour "show" that they would put on their "dance" channel... but that doesn't seem to worth it for us.
rusty / somafm
A friend has an old iBook running OSX that rarely needs to be rebooted and runs 24x7. I think the last time he rebooted it was to upgrade OSX. Oh and the time there was a 12 hour power outage... the battery only works as a 3-4 hour UPS. :-)
Just start sending out lots of spam featuring their URL!
Wowbagger wrote: ``I can make all the personal calls I want on the local autopatches`
:-)
Well, gosh, we don't all carry HTs (several times bigger than most cell phones) or have 2m/440 radios mounted under the dashboards in our cards.
And you're not really unplugged when you have a ham radio with you, now, are you?
Rusty / n6gqi (who much prefers a cell phone to a crowded ham repeater)
All those generators that businesses put in to provide power during blackouts are designed (and licensed / permitted / zoned) as backup units, not to be run fulltime.
Aside from the fact that most of them don't have enough fuel to run for more than 48 hours, and it's hard to get fuel delivered during a big blackout like the NE one.
This was a question we always asked our colo vendors who boasted 48 hours of generator fuel. What happens if it is a big earthquake with widespread outages? "We'll get it trucked in." What if the roads are blocked? Level 3 told us - we have a dock on the side of the building and will have a barge in here making fuel deliveries. When I asked about how they'd get the drawbridge up which blocks access to their dock, they were flustered and started talking about long hoses.
But the fact is, all those generators are designed to run for short periods of time - usually less than a few hours. They're not designed/planned for longterm widespread outages.
THe smart installations will have "excerciser timer" which fire up the unit once a week for 10 minutes or so, as well as remote monitoring for low oil levels and such. But that costs extra, so lots of places didn't bother with that part.
I'm paying about $0.25 a kw/h. My electric bill has tripled since 1999. Part of the way this was done was in the "baseline amount". You still get a really tiny amount of electricity real cheap, but over that, you're paying a lot.
I can generate 1000 watts for 24 hours for about 3 gallons of gas with my honda generator. That's $6 for 24kwh, or $0.25 a kw/hour. Surely, I should be able to get electricity substantially cheaper from a professionally run utility?
Your ears have different frequency response curves depending on where the sound is coming from. Add to that the phase differences and distortion the shape of the ear adds to sound, and you can fake a sound to make it sound like its coming from different places. This is the basis of the SRS audio system, and similar systems such as Roland Space Sound (RSS) and Bob Carver's old 1980s Sonic Holigraphy.
Why does everyone think that going public is the only way to be successful? All google really needs to do is give a good return to their VCs. They can possibly do that and stay private. There are lots of good reasons for staying private.
Just like the Carlyle Group!
I just want to clarify that SomaFM is not a 501(c)3 Nonprofit corporation. We don't bring in that much money and can't afford to hire the accountants to audit our books. However, we are commercial free, although we do have links to Amazon.com which we receive a (small) commission from, and a few other companies from time to time which we link the web site to for other affiliate fees.
SomaFM is run like a non-profit though. All our revenue (90% which is donations) goes into the actual costs of running the station, any surplus funds go towards expanding our programming and accessibility.
It would be great to be a real 501(c)3 nonprofit corp, and hopefully some day we can achieve that status. Then I could get a big-ass salary like the head of United Way or all those other charities do.
(Just kidding about the big-ass salary! But I would like SomaFM to be successful enough that I could do it as my only job.)
Rusty Hodge
SomaFM.com
(my email address is my first name at the domain)
From Northern Light:
Source: AFX News - Asia
Date: 01/01/2003 20:22
Hon Hai replaces LG as sole supplier of Apple's iMac/eMac PCs - report
TAIPEI (AFX-ASIA) - Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (2317.TW) has replaced LG Electronics Co as the sole supplier of Apple Computer Inc's iMac/eMac desktop PCs, with 2003 shipments estimated at up to 1.0 mln units, the Economic Daily News reported without citing a source.
And this ruling will do nothing to stop them from listening to news programming, or other non-music programming.
And the ruling will not prevent musician taxi drivers from playing the music that they themselves own the copyright to.
Royalty fees for public performance of radio and TV broadcasts go way way back, this is nothing new. The only thing new is that this ruling states that taxis are indeed public spaces, just like bars, restaurants, and stores.
By the way, if you think you can show commercial TV in a public place without permission, call DirecTV or your local cable company, and try to get it installed into your bar, restaurant or store. You'll find it costs a whole lot more than installing into your home, and the prices vary by the size of your establishment.
PS- I wasn't arguing what was ethical, just what was the law.
Anytime you use music (that you don't own the rights to) in a business environment, you have to pay. This includes if you play the radio in a retail store or other business, or if you have music on hold, etc.
This is because it's considered a public performance.
In the US, most businesses are using music services like Muzak, AEI (now part of DMX) or others which include the royalty fees as part of their service fees.
Should cab drivers be allowed to show movies in their cabs? What about a bar? If you think they should be allowed to without paying any royalties, then why shouldn't I be allowed to open my own second run movie house with a video projector and lots of DVDs?
In reality, it wasn't really Jesse Helms, it was his congressional staffers. It was all part of politics, and Jesse himself probably doesn't even give a damn one way or the other, but his office does.
Helm's staffers were really interested in making this change, and went to great lengths to come up with a compromise that could be pushed through a lame duck session.
Frankly, I thought the bill would be dead. I'm impressed with the political acumen of Jesse's staff. (And now, with the passage of this with their amendments, it's a feather in their cap)
When you get inside Washington politics, it's more and more like a game and less and less like reality.
Rusty / SomaFM
Most copyrights of the SOUND RECORDINGS of classical music are held by RIAA member labels or their affiliates.
Remember folks, we're not talking about the composers. We're talking about who owns the sound recordings, made by the conductor and the musicians who played on that recording.
Classical music is not an RIAA alternative, unless you are buying some of those Costco CDs released by eastern eurpoean orchestras (which are also copyrighted).
Just because it's non-RIAA music doesn't mean it's not covered by the DMCA and is exempt from CARP fees.
The DMCA authorized SoundExchange to collect royalties on behalf of ALL copyright owners. So unless you don't have explicit permission to play the recording (aka a "waiver") and the recording is not in the public domain, you have to pay SoundExchange (a division of the RIAA).
No, that's not correct at all. The copyright holder still can do whatever he wants with that copyright, including allow downloads and broadcast it over internet radio.
The only way you're prevented from broadcasting your own music is if you signed a record deal and granted the recording copyrights to a record company (or created the recording as a work for hire for them).
If you retain all your own copyrights, you can broadcast your music all you want. You can even grant waivers to other broadcast stations that will allow them to play your music without paying for it.
The only problem is, if you music is really good and has gotten some exposure, a label will usually try and buy the rights to it. Sometimes these labels want exclusive rights, and they don't like the fact that you've granted waivers to internet stations, and as part of buying the rights to your music will insist that the waiver to the net radio station be rescinded. Which sucks for web radio, and is why a lot of independent webcasters who play mostly indie music have had to start paying CARP royalties on music they've already been playing rotalty free (and with permission) for a long time.
Your assumptions that is someone tunes in for a fraction of a second will be counted as a listener session is incorrect. See here:
http://www.copyright.gov/carp/webcast_regs.html
The Register notes, however, that the Webcasters' concerns regarding the Panel's determination not to grant its request to impose no royalty on songs less than 30 seconds in duration are ameliorated for the current licensing period. Under the proposed terms of payment, a service may estimate the number of performances for purposes of determining the extent of copyright liability on an "Aggregate Tuning Hour" basis, which calculates payment on the basis of 15 performances per hour.32
The Webcasters had advocated the use of "Aggregated Tuning Hours" as a way to address their
concerns regarding the Panel's decision not to provide a lower rate for partial performances.
Webcasters Petiton at 71-72. Their argument, however, is not the bases for the Register's recommendation to provide for use of the estimation methodology throughout the license period.
The Register is proposing this course of action in the short term merely to address separate
concerns of the Register regarding the logistics involved in reporting the number of performances
of sound recordings. This recommendation on the part of the Register should in no way be construed as undermining the Panel's decision that transmissions of sound recordings of less
than 30 seconds are compensable.
Close This approach alleviates a Licensee's obligation to account for and pay for each performance, including those that are less than 30 seconds in duration.
This rant (no pun intended) about SomaFM's expenses is kind of off the topic.
But if anyone would like to know the details on what it costs to run SomaFM (with 10 channels, and we have 12 ready to go if we can get back on the air), drop me an email. I'll be happy to discuss it. rusty at somafm dot com.
The $20,000 number was a projection, based on raising $8,000 in the first 6 months of 2002. We haven't raised $20,000 in a year yet - maybe someday we will. SomaFM has raised $25,000 total during our entire lifetime - We went on the 'air' in '99.
Why do you say that $$$ signs are all I see now? SomaFM would have to bring in a lot more than $20,000 in order for me to make any money off it! And you know what? I wold LOVE IT if SomaFM could be my full time job! Why wouldn't I? But that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
So I run SomaFM as if it were a non-profit business. And I do run it as a business, because I want it to be sustainable. Ideally, I would like to see it become a true 501(c)3 non profit. But we'd need to be bringing in a lot more money to make that a reality. (The accountant and auditor costs, corporate tax fees, and all that other crap you need to be a 501(c)3 corp, mean that it will be a long while before we can do that.)
Rusty Hodge
SomaFM
That would be ASCAP/BMI busting them, not the RIAA. There is no sound recording royalty for playing the radio or records in a public place. Do you do have to pay the royalty for the musical composition, and that's what ASCAP and BMI collects.
There are 2 different royalties that webcasters have to pay.
And ASCAP and BMI haven't noticed 90% of the webcasters listed on Shoutcast.com.