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."
Solidarity! (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile... (Score:4, Interesting)
The RIAA doesn't need another 500 "internet stations." This might be the biggest non-event since the breakup of the Smiths.
Re:What does this mean for... (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Soundexchange gets paid even for non-member music. The law says that if you can't pay them, you don't play the music.
Now, there is one thing though, Soundexchange is required to allow artists and radio stations to contract directly and individually and is required to track all of these individual contracts so that they don't bill for those recordings. As creative commons grows, we might have a bit of a weapon to fight back with, if on our end we set up something more-or-less automatic for creating those contracts, it may turn out that we can swamp Soundexchange with them if they haven't already automated their end of the deal. If we can, and Soundexchange fails to keep up their end of the law, since they are "deputized" to operate the law, their failure might be prosecutable as malfeasance (if you can convince the Department of Justice to care about corporations), especially if it can be shown that at some step of the way they intentionally refused a contract or knowingly billed for a contracted performance.
Retroactive? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, though, how in the heck can a price increase be retroactive?
RIAA Wins and Loses at the same time (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:except for Last.fm (Score:5, Interesting)
But of course, IANAL.
Re:What does this mean for... (Score:1, Interesting)
I have no idea what the situation is for indie music. My (perhaps overly cynical) guess would be that they don't differentiate between the two.
And as a paid subscriber to Pandora.com (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand the protest, and I sympathize. But I'm not a "free" subscriber. I've paid them for a service. Will they deliver it?
Re:Solidarity! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What can I do? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute,"
Robert Goodloe Harper (1818)
Re:except for Last.fm (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess I shouldn't even listen to them, though, for that day and just bring some CDs to work.
Don't play their music (Score:1, Interesting)
Mayhap this is the boost Creative Commons licensed artists have been looking for.
Maybe a way around? (Score:2, Interesting)
You set up a SINGLE SERVER out of the country, say Sweden, Norway, Canada. You feed a SINGLE STREAM to that server. So you pay royalties on that single stream.
Now, that server just happens to mirror out to a few thousand listeners. But it's a different server, not you the Internet Radio Station. You're streaming just a single stream...
Potential here? I could see relocating a few big boxes and a few fat pipes out of the US just for such a purpose. Could be a lucrative little business. Kind of like Akamai for audio streams...
Interesting about who has said things about this (Score:5, Interesting)
I do listen to a lot of Online Radio, primarily KTRS 550, and KMOX out of my home town of St. louis at work. There are some afternoon shows I like to listen too and now since I live out both of their radio range (I can get KMOX sometimes at night, but now that the Cards games have moved...)
Still I listen to more podcasts of shows that aren't in my market like the Tony Kornheiser show and then some of the ESPN shows like PTI.
I had my own radio show on the college radio back in the day, and I remember we were charged by the song, not the number of listeners, but as a low power system, I'm not sure how all those rates are calculated anymore. If that is still the case, this just seems like a way to cut competition for terrestrial radio stations.
Re:Solidarity! (Score:2, Interesting)
I think it'd be more effective to do follow Madonna's example from a few years back. Instead of going silent, they could spoken word broadcasts to summarize the problem and outline actions that citizens could take.
In fact, I'd like to see news organizations do the same. Of course, I'd also like to see pigs fly. Independent operators are looking at the destruction of their businesses; newscasters worry about their jobs.
Re:Supply and demand (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Retroactive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ridiculousness with an easy solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Use compressed music as advertisement.
Artists should be making most of their money off of live performances.
Sell CDs for a reasonable price (this is the real problem, RIAA. Why are you too greedy to see this?). $10 instead of $20. I *might* pay $15, if it is an artist I really dig and there are a lot of good songs on the CD. For older music, sell it for $5-$8 per CD. Sell MP3 CDs with 3-10 albums on them in compressed format for $20 (or the equivalent online, whatever).
Why is this so difficult? People don't pay for the shit because it's ridiculously over-priced. I definitely won't pay for compressed music, and buy most stuff used these days, or from local bands themselves at CD release parties ($5 a CD).
Compressed music == advertisement for the real product. If your product isn't worth paying for, then maybe you should fix THAT problem. For stuff I like and want to add to my collection, I much prefer having the uncompressed 'master' to encode and catalog as I see fit. (on that note, stop with the bullshit DRM crap, Mmmkay?).
Just some of my thoughts on the subject.
Not quite (Score:2, Interesting)
Or, better, still, we get some sensible laws just as soon as someone takes the time to challenge this ridiculous law in federal court. It is, after all, a violation of copyright in that it allows the RIAA to essentially claim rights on your behalf that you may not want claimed... actually, it's little different than the Google "opt out" program the copyright statists are being so pissy over. Of course this essentially means exactly what I initially said will be the scenario because the RIAA is never going to go after a station that provably plays only "independant" material of the sort mentioned - because the last thing they want is such a precarious law to actually be tested.