A Reprieve for Internet Radio 108
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."
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
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> 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.
More or less, it's just a more contemporary and humorous riff on that idea. [scenepointblank.com] I've got the travelogue album on vinyl somewhere, I'll have to dig it out.
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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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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.
This would not necessarily work because too many stations use a play for pay model. The label doesnt pay, it's a lot less likely your music will get played. Even with the new laws that are supposed to guarantee x number of hours for Indy labels and such, that still accounts for very little play time not corporately endorsed.
Of course, for the Sheeple who only listen to the (one hit wonder, here today, gone tomorrow) music they are told to ("Crap 40"), I guess it may work very well...
Never mind, good
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In addition, there is nothing preventing the station using such technology from "inserting" songs they wish/are required to at specific or ra
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No, No, No... You DO have a good idea... hope the tone of my post didnt make you think I thought otherwise... but why dont you add to that idea a slight variant on it? Why cant people just log into their computers and do the same? Maybe even select what times they will be listening to the station, and have the station's computer "raffle off" that time slot depending on how many people requested songs to fill it?
-Rob
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This has been done for a while now...
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Although it's good to play when you have people over for background noise, I still enjoy listening to the actual DJ talk about upcoming concerts involving the bands they play, different events happening aroudn town, etc. I personally list
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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]
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That song has been running through my head throughout this whole debacle.
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nothing to see here...
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"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)
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Re:"didn't realise" (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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?
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pinko commie bastards that won't play crap for money?! That makes me sick!
Every red-blooded lover of free trade should play crap for money, and for more money they should eat crap, and for even more money they should dance to the sound of this crap in a very sexual and stereotyped fashion!
now if that's not phraseology worthy of a constitutional amendment, I don't know what is.
seriously... I
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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.
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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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I hope something happens soon (Score:1)
I love Live365, It would be a same to see them go under. They have an amazing selection of music and for 3.65 a month it is a great bargain.
Re:I hope something happens soon (Score:5, Funny)
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Yay for Live365 (Score:1)
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*chuckle* I actually do work for Live365. And no, doesn't sound like an employee post
(I'm probably one of the few that actually reads slashdot). I wish we did have the resources
to try to shill the usual net outlets, then I can try to commandeer that effort for
something else
We're a lot smaller than most folks would imagine. one of the common complaints around
here is that we don't have the resources to do any promotion to drive awareness and of
course Pandora, last.fm gets tons more press ink than we do.
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
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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
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The internet threatened that business model. With the predatory fees against the internet radio, they hope to drive them into bankruptcy and then snatch up the remains - it happened to Napster and some other websites. Then one by one they acquire the distribution channel on the internet and fund their legal war chest in the process through the fees.
The day of silence was a preemptive move by the int
Re:Testing the waters? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody want to rent some of my Canadian bandwidth for streaming to US customers?
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Not true. It kills internet radio broadcasts that stream to the U.S., according to Rusty Hodge [somafm.com] of soma.fm [somafm.com]:
"The law says that anything transmitted to listeners in the US is liable for the royalties."Re: (Score:2)
Last time I checked, U.S. law doesn't apply in Canada. You lot can make saying "eh" a capital offense, but it's not going to change how we speak up here one iota.
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I think this move shows that the rafiaa is at least a bit hesitant to take this matter in front of Congress, where their "file-sharing is piracy" metaphor isn't quite as deeply entrenched (anyone remember Senator Stevens [ipaction.org]? The supreme court is involved in a very intricate game of precedence and interpretation, and right now one side is just playing a hell of a lot better.
But I think FiniteElementalist hits this one on the head: the Riaa does not want this to become a political hot topic entering a presiden
Just say no. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just say no. (Score:4, Interesting)
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They really struck gold with that little trick.
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These stations need to start up alternate stations that make use of indies.
It doesn't work that way. SoundExchange collects royalties for all music played, not just those bands that have registered for the service. The idea behind it was that keeping track of who has and has not registered with SoundExchange would be "too hard", so Congress just allows SoundExchange to collect for everyone, and distribute to those who have registered. Of course, in this day of internet databases and automated playlists that argument doesn't hold water anymore, but that's still how the system work
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It seems worth inserting a reminder that the statutory license works to the advantage of the independent artist.
The broadcaster doesn't have to negotiate rights with 1,000 ephemeral no-name bands. He can broadcast pretty much anything he likes, anything that catches his interest, without fear of litigation som
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
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Let internet radio die (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not all of us are content with garage band performance. There are entire genres of music that demand organization, talent, money, and resources that are very difficult to put together.
Why SoundExchange? (Score:4, Interesting)
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The SoundExchange website has links to the relevant laws and the "Notice of Designation As Collective Under Statutory License": http://www.soundexchange.com/about/about.html [soundexchange.com]
Yes, SoundExchange is basically run by the RIAA, so I have my doubts as to whether their collection and payout methods are fair to non-RIAA artists (or even RIAA artists, for that matter). But as a practical matter, who else was going to offer to take on this responsibility? I haven't checked, but I have a feeling that when the Copy
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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
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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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But IANAL, so take this with a
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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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SoundExchange collects and distributes all royalties under the statutory license.
If you can think of a simpler way to encourage a broadcaster to take a chance on the no-name band, a simpler way for the no-name band to be receive payment for every broadcast, let me know.
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"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
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You think the goatse would stay up forever? It was a defacement, and I was just trying warn people, hence why I was moderated as informative rather than trolling.
And you would think that I would have been moderated as trolling if there hadn't been originally.
Thanks for the input though.
Fight the Music police! (Score:2, Informative)
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Sell the CDs at the right price ($5-$10), and use streaming just like radio...as advertisement. Yeah, I can use streamripper to save it. I can also record stuff from the radio. Both are lower quality than what I would buy if I like what I hear, so if I hear something new, I'd be likely to buy it if the business model wasn't so fscked up.
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So you think (traditional) radio stations deserve the (declining) piles of advertising cash that they bring in? Many people only listen to music on the radio and never buy, so it makes sense to me that the artists get a little kick-back for giving the radio stations something to play.
In the US artists pay the radio station to be played. Something around $100 000/year for a hit song (although this goes through middlemen selling playlists). This is done because the advertising effect of being heard results in bigger sales.
Minor error in article (Score:1)
It says "The Copyright Royalty that set the new online radio royalty rates . . ." but should probably say "The Copyright Royalty Board that set the new online radio royalty rates . . ."
These are the entities formerly known as Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels ("CARP"). True story: these were (very briefly) known as Copyright Royalty Arbitration Panels (which makes more sense, actually), but no one wanted to serve on a CRAP panel so they had to change the name.
"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
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The statutory license grants permission to play damn near everything. That is what all the shouting is about.