 Save Net Radio Coalition, Help Save Internet Radio! |
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itsmewendylee  |
Posted: 09-Mar-2007, 12:19 PM
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Servant
Group: Celtic Nation
Posts: 29
Joined: 03-Aug-2006
Zodiac: Willow
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Although most podcasters are non-profit hobbyists, which means we are exempt from "tax" because we aren't making an income, we know the RIAA is after us as well, using copyright and distribution law to figure out how to wipe us all out. Thus I feel a solidarity with my web radio bretheren, and I also happen to love LISTENING to web radio, so this has been a big deal for me!
There are plenty of illegal podcasts out there (playing music without permission,) but there are also alot of us playing by the rules- like me!
First off, I did send this to Marc, who is so busy lately he's just drowning in stuff. As a podcaster, like me, he isn't directly affected, but, as a lover of internet radio and a musician whose main avenue of reaching the market is internet radio and podcasting, he will be heavily affected, so I'm sure he's keeping tabs!
Second- I already blogged about this on my myspace site and urge everyone who has a myspace site to do so! I also copied my blog and sent it out as a bulletin.
Third- finally got around to creating a whole page for the issue on my side. Yeah, I blatantly cut and pasted most of it. It was quickest way to get it out there, and time is of the essence.
Cleveland Celtic podcast- Save Internet Radio
Hope it helps!
Wendy
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Even the mighty oak is just a nut that held it's ground.
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| stevenpd |
Posted: 09-Mar-2007, 02:40 PM
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Celtic Guardian
Group: Founder
Posts: 2,900
Joined: 15-Feb-2002
Zodiac: Reed
Realm: Fountain Valley, Calif.
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The more people know about this obscene situation, the better!
I was just reading an article where it is projected that, in the end, webcasters would be paying about 10 times more than terrestial radio! They're projecting that SoundExchange will have revenues of $2.3 billion.
| QUOTE | At the projected 2010 rate, streaming radio providers would provide SoundExchange with $2.3 billion in revenue. That's almost exactly 400% of the calculated cumulative total for PRO royalties to be collected during that same year - and keep in mind, radio stations with Internet services would owe both fees.
From this perspective, the SoundExchange royalties only look four times as much. But the size of the overall markets are disproportionate, so we asked ourselves what each station is paying per listener, if the assessed charges were applied to listeners rather than to songs.
How much should Internet and terrestrial broadcasters expect to pay in royalties fees for each of its customers? Our estimates reveal the disparity.
On a per-listener scale, broadcast radio stations paid $1.56 per listener on average during 2006; and in 2010, that figure rises to $1.94 per listener. BetaNews estimates that Internet radio sites, by contrast, will pay $8.91 per listener for 2006, rising to $15.59 per listener in 2008 and staying flat beyond that time.
Thus an Internet radio music provider is likely to pay in royalties almost ten times the amount for each of its listeners throughout the year, than the terrestrial broadcaster. |
Here's the article.The article is fairly detailed financial analysis of the fees, but the charts are clear. We just have to keep the pressure up. More knowledgable sources than I are concluding that this is a blatant attempt to monopolize the music industry. If RIAA gets away with this now, then its a matter of time before they go after the podcasters.
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2018 Vote in the 2018 Music AwardsDear Lord, lest I continue in my complacent ways, help me to remember that someone died for me today. And if there be war, help me to remember to ask and to answer "am I worth dying for?" - Eleanor RooseveltThe ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)
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| John Clements |
Posted: 09-Mar-2007, 04:21 PM
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Celtic Guardian
Group: Celtic Nation
Posts: 1,466
Joined: 26-Oct-2005
Zodiac: Elder
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I can remember how suggested that CR could move to Scotland, rather then being extorted out of business, but it’s not a bad idea. I might even join you, should it come to that. Don’t give up the ship.
JC
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We’re all poets, only some of us write it down. JC 9/27/08
Anyone who has the courage to disagree, deserves all do respect. JC 4/28/08
Life is a loosing battle, so you might as well live it up.
J.C. 3/29/08
Life should be like skiing, you have the most fun on the way down. J.C. 8/17/07
Take their word for it, and that’s just what you’ll get.
J.C. 3/19/07
Only the truth is worth the ultimate sacrifice.
J.C. 1/26/06
Compared to the far right, the far left is somewhere in the middle. J.C. 2/22/06
I’ll be the first to apologies, as long as I get one back.
J.C. 3/7/06
It’s a happy man, who can laugh at himself.
If you’re looking for a new experience, don’t hire someone with a lot of it. J.C. sometime in 1990
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| Dreamer1 |
Posted: 10-Mar-2007, 12:32 PM
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Mistress of the Hearth Fires, Dreamer of the Woods
Group: Founder
Posts: 1,405
Joined: 10-Sep-2003
Zodiac: Rowan
Realm: New England
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Okay, I've emailed all of our family, friends, and our State Rep. and Senators (Kennedy and Kerry). Our daughters are sending emails to all of their friends, to be passed along to their parents! I've signed all the petitions I could find, too.
This is an intolerable and unthinkable attack on our freedom, and must not be allowed to stand! Hang on Paul - we're all fighting for you, and for all of internet radio!
Dreamer1
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Look with the eyes of a child. 'Hope guides me. It is what gets me through the day, and especially the night.' -- A Knight's Tale "I talk to you as I talk to my own soul...and, Sassenach,” he whispered, “your face is my heart.” -- Jamie Fraser, "Dragonfly In Amber" by Diana Gabaldon  @Dremnghrt on Twitter, Dreamnghrt on tumblr - come say Hi! |
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| stevenpd |
Posted: 10-Mar-2007, 02:38 PM
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Celtic Guardian
Group: Founder
Posts: 2,900
Joined: 15-Feb-2002
Zodiac: Reed
Realm: Fountain Valley, Calif.
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| QUOTE (Macfive @ 09-Mar-2007, 05:18 PM) | Thanks again for everyone's support! And thank you Wendy for the plug and words of advice.
Falling developments closely. Alot of the outcome depends on what happens to Live365 - our broadcast provider. While I've read some articles that are promising, I've also read that there just may not be enough time for congress to act.
The ramnifications of this goes beyond internet radio. Think of all of the bandwidth providers, people developing broadcast tools, software, website design, audio trailers - even independent musicians themselves depend upon internet radio to broadcast their content. You are talking about an industry that creates jobs and probably puts millions of dollars into the economy.
You kill Internet Radio and you also kill jobs too! |
Timing seems to be the biggest issue in question. first round appeals can be filed within 30 days and secondary appeals within ninety days. I think that with all of the hoopla that has been created, everything will be put on hold until more hearings can be done. In other words, until they can figure a graceful way of back pedaling out of this mess.
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| stevenpd |
Posted: 12-Mar-2007, 01:37 PM
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Celtic Guardian
Group: Founder
Posts: 2,900
Joined: 15-Feb-2002
Zodiac: Reed
Realm: Fountain Valley, Calif.
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A ray of hope? Are the drips winning?
| QUOTE | Anxious Times for Net Radio
Music Industry Wants Higher Royalties,
But Are Labels Undermining Themselves?
March 12, 2007
Is Internet radio in trouble?
Last week the Copyright Royalty Board released a ruling proposing new performance royalty rates for online radio stations. An online radio station would pay .08 cent per song per listener for 2006 (the rates are retroactive), .11 cent in 2007, .14 in 2008, .18 cents in 2009 and .19 cents in 2010. Seems like little enough, but it adds up -- and this small change is a big change for small Webcasters. Under a deal brokered in 2002, small Webcasters had met their royalty obligations by paying artists and record labels 12% of revenue, but the new rules would do away with that exemption.
MORE ON NET RADIO
Computerworld has a good overview of the current Net-radio flap here. For more, see the Broadcast Law Blog's coverage here and here.
Net-radio operators have sounded the alarm. Kurt Hanson, founder of online radio company Accuradio, told my print colleague Sarah McBride that he estimated the new rules would raise Accuradio's royalty payments to about $600,000 -- more than Accuradio's 2006 revenue -- from about $50,000. And he warns others face similarly tough math, arguing that even well-run Net-radio stations would see performance royalties eat up all their annual revenue -- and that's before the need to pay royalties to composers. (Performance royalties and composer royalties are separate -- the former are paid to artists and record labels, while the latter are paid to songwriters and music publishers.) "Terrestrial" broadcasters who stream radio would also pay more, and public-radio stations would no longer be able to pay a flat fee, as agreed to in a previous deal.
"Left unchanged, these rates will end Internet radio," Pandora.com co-founder Tim Westergren warned on Pandora's blog. (Pandora, a combination streaming-audio service and recommendation engine, could be particularly hard hit by the new rules: As a multichannel operator, the service would have to pay $500 per channel that has a certain number of listener hours. Pandora has 6 million users, each of whom can have up to 100 channels. You can see why the company is worried.)
To be sure, there's a lot left to this story -- it makes more sense to view what's happening now as hardball negotiating than as an endgame. Besides the possibility of striking a deal, Webcasters can appeal, and Internet-radio fans are signing petitions and writing letters to their representatives. It isn't clear if Congress will step in before the appeals process runs its course, but lawmakers have taken notice: Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) said in a hearing last week that "this represents a body blow to many nascent Internet radio broadcasters and further exacerbates the marketplace imbalance between what different industries pay." Then there's the possibility that the furor could spill over to the proposed merger between Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. Those companies have argued they should be allowed to team up, in part, because satellite radio competes with Internet radio.
Net-radio fans are angry, but they shouldn't be too hasty in blasting the Copyright Royalty Board. The real problem is a pair of misguided decisions made by Congress in the 1990s.
Tim Hanrahan and I wrote about this issue nearly five years ago, and it's depressing to see how little has changed. A brief recap: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, building on 1995's Digital Performance Rights in Sounds Recordings Act, said Net-radio firms had to pay performance royalties on songs played in addition to composer royalties on those songs. Terrestrial radio stations pay composer royalties, but they don't pay performance royalties, under the long-established rationale that record labels benefit from the promotional value of songs played on the radio.
So if a Clear Channel radio station plays that new Fergie song over the air, it doesn't pay a performance royalty -- but if it streams Fergie over the Net (or satellite radio), it does. Make sense to you?
Of course not -- because that makes no sense whatsoever. Treating the two as different is missing the radio forest for the Internet trees; in a sane world, lawmakers would treat radio as radio, regardless of how it's delivered. For the recording industry's disingenuous analysis of the law governing radio and royalties, read our 2002 Real Time, which preserves part of a Recording Industry Association of America FAQ that's been taken down. (The recording industry maintains that Net-radio operators aren't in danger of going under this time either, thanks to steadily increasing advertising revenues.)
All this aside, I've become a fan of Pandora since writing about it here, and perhaps my recent experience with the service will serve as a warning to the recording industry of what it could be losing.
Pandora has become one of the most-important ways I find new music. It's a very simple service: You visit its Web site and tell it a handful of songs and/or artists you like, and it generates a streaming-audio channel for you, which you then refine by telling it you like a song, dislike it or are tired of it. If I like a song, I give it a thumbs-up, which simultaneously prompts Pandora to change my music channel to take that into account and bookmarks the song for later.
Last week I went through my Pandora profile to see all the songs I'd given a thumbs-up to since last summer. I played little snippets of the songs I'd indicated I liked, then I went over to eMusic and iTunes and bought 13 songs by 12 bands -- none of which I'd heard of before finding them on Pandora. I added my new purchases to my latest iTunes playlist, put on my iPod, and have been playing them nonstop since then.
Thirteen songs isn't a lot, but it's only been a week. I know I'll wind up buying more songs by those 12 bands, and some full albums by the bands I decide I really like. (I'm excited to find out that there are four albums by the Dagons, whose gleefully noisy "Heaven Wasn't in the Sky" is my new favorite song.) I'll recommend the songs that have staying power to my friends, perhaps leading some of them to buy them. And I'll keep listening to Pandora, leading to more songs getting a thumbs-up, and more music bought.
To me, that virtuous circle sure sounds like the old "radio is free promotion" bargain underlying traditional radio -- for which performance royalties have never been paid in the U.S. Yes, there are technological differences between terrestrial radio and Net radio, notably the ability to guide what's played, skip songs and keep track of what I like. But those differences seem to work to the advantage of artists and record labels: With Net radio, I'm more likely to hear songs I like, bookmark them and buy them. One listener's experiences aren't necessarily grounds for extrapolation, but this bargain seems like a pretty good deal for the recording industry, one it ought to be careful about altering.
Should Net radio be treated differently from terrestrial radio? Why or why not? Any experiences with Net radio? Write to me at [email protected]. If you've got something to say but don't want your comments considered for publication, please make that clear.
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