Internet Radio Will Go Silent on June 26th 250
Spamicles writes "Thousands of U.S. webcasters plan to turn off the music and go silent this Tuesday, June 26th, to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that, if implemented, would lead to the virtual shutdown of this country's Internet radio industry. In March, the Copyright Royalty Board announced that it would raise royalties for Internet broadcasters, moving them from a per-song rate to a per-listener rate. The increase would be made retroactive to the beginning of 2006 and would double over the next five years. Internet radio sites would be charged per performance of a song. A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays."
And in other news (Score:5, Funny)
Ob (Score:5, Funny)
Obigatory Ogg Vorbis request (Score:3, Funny)
They should really be using Ogg Vorbis, because it's VBR nature means it encodes silence just that much better than MP3 or AAC ;-)
SHH to Canada... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Retroactive? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obigatory Ogg Vorbis request (Score:2, Funny)
No Kidding (Score:5, Funny)
I'm all for it. Everybody should at least try having a real life for at least one 24-hour period anyway.
Re:And in other news (Score:2, Funny)
Who's going to actually do anything about it if it's only for one day?