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A Reprieve for Internet Radio
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Jul 02, 2007 06:09 AM
from the i-can-keep-getting-my-soundtrack-fix dept.
from the i-can-keep-getting-my-soundtrack-fix dept.
westlake writes "In the wake of Internet Radio's Day of Silence, SoundExchange has proposed a temporary $2500 cap on advance payments 'per channel/per station.' The Digital Music Association responded immediately in its own press release that it would agree to this, but only if the term for the new arrangement were extended to 2010 — or, preferably, forever. On another front, SoundExchange seems aware in its PR that it will have to concede something more to the non-profit webcaster, if it is to avoid Congressional action."
Related Stories
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News: Small Webcasters Offered a Rate Break, Reject It 123 comments
Pontifex minimus writes "Music royalty collection group SoundExchange has offered an olive branch to small webcasters. They are willing to delay the exorbitant new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board until 2010 for small webcasters in hopes that they can keep Congress from passing the Internet Radio Equality Act. Larger outfits, like Live365 and Pandora would not be affected and would have to pay the new rates. '"Although the rates revised by the CRB are fair and based on the value of music in the marketplace, there's a sense in the music community and in Congress that small webcasters need more time to develop their businesses," said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange.' SaveNetRadio rejected SoundExchange's offer, saying that it 'throws large webcasters under the bus.'"
[+]
News: Day of Silence On the Internet 276 comments
A number of readers sent in stories about Net radio going dark for a day. Not all of it, but according to the Globe and Mail at least 45 stations representing thousands of channels. The stations are protesting a ruling establishing royalty rates that will put most of them out of business on July 15. "The ruling... is expected to cost large webcasters such as Yahoo and Real Networks millions of dollars, drive smaller websites like Pandora.com and Live365.com out of business and leave a large chunk of the 72 million Net radio listeners in the dark." SaveNetRadio has a page where US residents can locate their senators and representatives to call them today.
[+]
Politics: Internet Radio's 'Second Chance' Bogging Down in House 105 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Wired is reporting that the Internet Radio Equality Act is failing fast in the House, with negotiations breaking down over fair pricing for internet radio broadcasters. 'A legislative setback could make it harder to dislodge the new fees, which took effect last month after a federal appeals court refused to postpone the payment deadline. With the threat of congressional backlash fading, SoundExchange could find little incentive to budge from its current position ... SoundExchange has already proposed changes that could relieve small and custom-streaming sites from charges they could not possibly afford to pay, at least in the short term. Many expect a small-webcaster deal to be done by early September, when Congress goes back into session. But the deal on the table hasn't changed since SoundExchange extended an offer in May to charge them 10 percent of gross revenue under $250,000, or 12 percent of gross revenues over $250,000, with a revenue cap at $1.25 million.'" All very cushy for SoundExchange. Wired also points out that this is the same organization illegally lobbying for terrestrial radio royalties through 'third party' shell groups.
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Still a chunk of change (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the end of radio, can you hear me now?
Re:Still a chunk of change (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of "WXJL Tonight" by The Human League from 1980 about the last DJ on the air lamenting his fate as all the other stations have gone over to 24/7 automatic stations without any chat inbetween the songs.
And now I'm left alone
I haven't got a word to say
And youre the one who makes the choice
To turn me on or turn me off
But now it really matters
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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Unfortunately that is almost here. Steve-FM [steve-fm.com] in Columbia, SC does not have a DJ, and plays "whatever we want", so no requests. The sadder part is that it's the best station in Columbia, and has risen to be No. 1 in the area because it doesn't have a DJ.
What would be cool (though not for DJ's) would be to combine the "music playing robot" with some AI. Set up a phone bank (obviously hooked up to a computer). Link it to your music catalog. Let people call in and "request" a song. Once a song gets x amount of votes, play it in the next rotation.
Oh, the possibilities with such a system.
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Now it's all automated and corporately driven, unless you find a good college station: (like www.wicb.org [wicb.org] -- listen online and rated very well nationally)
8 years ago when I called up
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Technically, they CAN'T LEGALLY go after the PD or copyleft stations. Sure, they can ASK for the fees from these broadcasters, but they cannot win them in court since Soundexchange wasn't specifically hired to protect these copyrights and they have no contract to do so. Attempting to get fees from PD/copyleft broadcasters would be like me sticking up a 7-11 store,
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It doesn't matter what's legal and what's not. All that matters is that they can suppress any budding website with legal threats, delays and costs. There's a trail of damage a mile wide behind these scum Death By Lawyer: 10 Cool Sites We Miss [mashable.com]
"didn't realise" (Score:5, Insightful)
We're going through a painful growing stage that's going to be full of 'WTF?' moments but I'd be surprised if in ten years time, the music industry landscape will be drastically different with self-publishing bands, CDs a rarity (or their replacement format) and the licencing juggernaut that we have right now being relegated to history.
The only reason I can see for the industry as it stands to exist is R&D but they do so little of that now as to be moot. If a band doesn't hit the big time on their first single/album, they're dropped, no more the nurturing of a band over several albums while they find their stride.
The HiFi brigade will naturally be less than enthused about MP3 as a primary format but that will no doubt be replaced with some sort of lossless DRM free format by then.
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Re:"didn't realise" (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Re:"didn't realise" (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:"didn't realise" (Score:4, Insightful)
ShedPlant makes a valid point, though it's not to the liking of most people here.
The record industry is extremely wealthy and has the ear of the extremely powerful. Though it may seem obvious to us that their business model is outdated and is destined to fail, they have the political clout to make sure US legislators prop up their model for a long, long time. They also, via control (or association with those in control) of television media, continue to have the strongest marketing presence.
It's all fine and dandy to believe that the music industry of the future is just over the horizon, but I don't think it's in the immediate future -- there is simply too much political clout and capital invested in making sure that then status quo is maintained. I think back ten years, and people were saying that by now, we'd already have witnessed the restructuring of the music industry due to technological changes. Ten years from now, I think we'll look back at today, and be saying the same thing.
This isn't just Monday morning pessimism, the simple truth is that it will be another generation (or two!) before the people who really understand the future of media distribution are in the political power positions necessary to overcome the money being funneled into politics by the media companies. And that's if we're lucky.
Parent
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Biggest and richest corporate organizations in America? Uh, really?
EMI Group [emigroup.com] bills itself as the worlds largest independent music company. They had revenue last year of 2 billion pounds (approximately 4 billion dollars) with profits of approximately 250 million pounds ($500 million dollars).
Compare that to say, Exxon Mobile [cnn.com]. In 2006, it had a profit of 39.5 bil [breitbart.com]
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Not just self-publishing, but self-publishing and somewhat self-promoting. I mean somewhat because a new market will be created for promoters, whom will be hired directly by
Re:"didn't realise" (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, internet radio is dealing a serious blow to the mafiaa. Remember that radio is maybe the most influencial medium when it comes to making some kind of music mainstream. You hear it all the time, so it's gotta be good. It ain't the other way around anymore. It used to be (ok, some 50 years or so ago), that music was good, people liked it, so radio played it to attract listeners. Today, it's reverse. Just like in every other industry. Without real competition, and everyone selling you the same crap, you have no choice but to accept the crap and choose from different equally crappy products. Thus it doesn't hurt a radio station to spew hypecrap instead of playing music.
Internet radio sure hurts this kind of revenue stream. Quite a few internet radio "stations" are ran by people who want to play "their" music. Who have a certain liking and want this to be heard. And they sure as hell won't hype some crap song even for money. If anything, they ridicule it.
Can you see why the mafiaa isn't really too fond of the idea of internet radio?
Parent
The panel is incompetent (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, that won't happen. Incompetence and ignorance are not grounds for removing a judge, and from the prespective of the current administration they played the game very nicely.
Parent
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Never never NEVER ever trust any company that get's laws passed in their favor and then back off claiming "ignorance" they did it on purpose, if they didn't then they need to petition cong
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much of the US (and elsewhere) hasn't even got broadband yet
That's a fair point and I'm looking at it from the European standpoint. Apart from my 70 something year old mum, I don't know *anyone* that isn't on broadband including people's parents and grandparents. I'm also scratching my head to think of anyone that still buys CDs too. I buy the odd one still but then I also buy new vinyl because I'm a collector. Everyone else I know either buys or aquires MP3s as their only source of music now.
Someone else noted how powerful and rich the record companies are. In th
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Testing the waters? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or it could just be that they are incompetent with dealing with internet distribution of music. That wouldn't be unprecedented.
Re:Testing the waters? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the end, I don't think they will
Parent
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they just want to slow it down enough until they can ensure that they will continue to be a relevant part of music distribution.
they (and the music industry is certainly not the only one) don't want to slow down the internet, they want to make the internet like television. perhaps inadvertently, stuff like nat has done it for them; many people don't get the ability to receive tcp connections, and to receive udp (from people you didn't first send a packet to) one often has to do weird little dances like stun. if you can't receive connections even though you want to, well, we've broken the original idea behind the internet. there's n
Re:Testing the waters? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody want to rent some of my Canadian bandwidth for streaming to US customers?
Parent
Just say no. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just say no. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Heh Heh Heh (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not longer, DiMA? If I were SoundExchange, I'd be amused with this - the longer they can make 2,500 the maximum, the more erosion of actual costs (inflation) will happen. $2,500 isn't what it used to be.
Finland.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now - last week - they've turned around and are excited to offer this brand new venue for artists to reach their audience!
It would be interesting to know the details of the new contract..
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a) you are a big fish, we allow you to broadcast for a bargain of $2500. We know you, we thrust you (the large ones are usually already FM stations which have been dealing with the music industries for decades and are controllable).
b) you are a small fish, either you pay a ridiculous fee or shut up. You are our problem because there are too many of you we have no control over.
In 2008 or later, when most of the small stations are gone, we negotiate new deals with the remainin
Let internet radio die (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why SoundExchange? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Section 114 allows the Copyright Office to designate a receiving agent for those who have not registered a receiving agent with the Copyright Office.
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Umm... who told you membership for artists costs money? As far as I can tell, you just have to follow their membership process [soundexchange.com], which involves signing some forms. Hell, the website explicitely says "Membership is free and open to all **sound recording c
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Not sure when the Library of Congress made the ruling, but they assigned SoundExchange as the default receiving agent sometime in the late 90s (1999?). This was likely due to SoundExchange being the most mature and capable of the receiving agencies out there at the time (which, in line
"it would agree to this" (Score:3, Informative)
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Parent is a troll, no goatse => mod down (Score:2)
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NSFW GOATSE (Score:5, Informative)
Don't click the "it would agree to this link" it has either been hacked or the picture redirected to goatse!
Warning!!!!!!
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Somebody probably moderated him funny for better punishing him later.
See, a funny point doesn't give any karma to the poster; however if another moderator then mods him down as flamebait or trool, he'll lose karma. So, modding obvious trolls as funny is a greate way to make sure that they can lose more than 2 points per post...
Basically, the sewer is the limit: if you're enough moderators, first mod funny, then troll, lather, rinse, repeat.
Oh, and yes: punishment he deserves, beca
Fight the Music police! (Score:2, Informative)
"non profit broadcaster?" (Score:2, Troll)
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Radio's customers are NOT the listeners. Their customers are their advertisers. Their commodity is YOU, the loyal listener. Their product is not music, music is simply one of their expenses.
Non-profit radio stations don't really have customers. At the most you could call either the listener, or the artists the customers. Listener, most likely, as you're the one who may or may not donate to them.
Non-profit radio stations, by
Re:I hope something happens soon (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)