There is a lot going on right now with the Internet Radio Industry. Lawsuits are flying, stations are closing down, and probably a whole bunch of behind the scene maneveuring by corporations. Weigh this with the fact that Congress let the small webcaster act expire on January 1st which means that small independent stations have to pay the same rates as Pandora, Apple Music, Amazon - how fair is that?
How does Celtic Radio play into this? We use a service called Radionomy which is owned by Vivendi (pretty much the European equivalent of Sony Music Corporation). Vivendi owns Universal Music Group which alone has 50 Labels! Right now they are suing each other, but there is hope they are going to come to some resolution so we can move on.
As of this month, Radionomy has been dropped from TuneIn.com and also they have geoblocked certain countries from Tune-In.com. The only country with significant listenership for us is Canada.
So if you are listening from Canada you will receive a message that our channel is not available in that country. We are looking into other options and also we have to be patience to see what is going to happen. This could all be temporary until the lawsuit between the titans is resolved which we hear there might be some negations taking place to end the lawsuit.
In the end though, something needs to happen globally. How can any Internet Radio Station handle 300 individual laws for every country on earth. There really needs to be a global solution to this.
Fortunately for Celtic Radio, the majority of our music is non-label, family bands, friends and people that have asked us to play their music. It might be a little different for other radio stations that play top 40 music.
We will be monitoring the situation and once the dust settles keep you informed of any changes, but from one of our highly respected, senior fellow broadcasters he advises patience now as most likely there will be resolution to the lawsuit.
For those in Canada you might want to look into geoblocking and how that all works. Certainly we can not recommend anything to overcome geoblocking, but there are many articles on google about how the whole process works in case you are interested.
I always recommend that everyone use a VPN (e.g. purevpn) in order to protect their privacy and prevent hackers from snooping in on confidential information... and if you just happen to use a VPN static IP address based in the United States your location will appear to be there. People use VPN static IP addresses all the time to get around government censorship of free speech.
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I for one am tired of large wheels crushing smaller things into conformity ALL CHANGE IS NOT NECESSARILY PROGRESS AS ALL MOVEMENT IS NOT NECESSARILY FORWARD
(LeeLee I hope you or they get this worked out. you are a valued friend through our common interest here)
I'm sorry Leelee. We are not really sure why Canada has been blocked, along with a handful of other countries. It is possible this is just temporary as the lawsuit between Sony Music and Vivendi gets worked out.
As a producer for Radionomy, we let them deal with all of the license and royalty issues. I am confident that once they kiss and make up then whatever the reason they decided to block some of the countries will be lifted.
I actually was just reading that they lifted the block for anyone using a blackberry device, which to be quite honest with you makes no sense to me.
We are actually working on a back up plan to restore listening to Canada. It may increase our costs, but we are committed to supporting Canada so please bear with us while we figure this all out!
Because of the support we have received over the years, our hardware and network can be easily configured to work with just about any service. So we are confident, one way or the other, that we can get it working again.
I for one am tired of large wheels crushing smaller things into conformity ALL CHANGE IS NOT NECESSARILY PROGRESS AS ALL MOVEMENT IS NOT NECESSARILY FORWARD
(LeeLee I hope you or they get this worked out. you are a valued friend through our common interest here)
Hi Skinner,
It really shows you what is going on in this country. Money seems to speak, but the tens of thousands of small and micro webcasters could not have a voice with the copyright board because it costs thousands of dollars to be represented.
They should have continued the small webcaster act of 2009, but they let it expired and so that is the fate of many online broadcasters and of course Live365 went belly up because of that.
Those in webcasting hope that a global solution is found. How can any small organization or even a large company manage 300 different laws from all of the countries.
Our goal is simple, to spread Celtic music across the world and we certainly hope we can do that for a very long time.
A lot of these rule changes are going to make it difficult for Mom, Pop and Family bands to get airplay. I hear a lot of musicians are not happy with what is going on. Of course, if you are Justin Beiber, Pitbull or Kerry Perry then you are getting a windfall in royalty payments. And the sad part about it is that a lot of young folks don't necessarily understand that this is a power grab and they are losing their right selection of music. Almost like court authorized censorship through taxing them out of existence! It will certainly be a less diverse musical landscape if this continues.
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Tried to listen hear in the states today and had no music come through but the ads sure did!
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I support the separation of church and hate!
IMAGINATION - the freest and largest nation in the world!
One can not profess to be of "GOD" and show intolerence and prejudice towards the beliefs of others.
Am fear nach gleidh na h–airm san t–sith, cha bhi iad aige ’n am a’ chogaidh. He that keeps not his arms in time of peace will have none in time of war.
"We're all in this together , in the parking lot between faith and fear" ... O.C.M.S.
“Beasts feed; man eats; only the man of intellect knows how to eat well.”
"Without food we are nothing, without history we are lost." - SHADOWS
Is iomadh duine laghach a mhill an Creideamh. Religion has spoiled many a good man.
There was definitely an issue this morning. We noticed an absence of listeners, but when our studio lassie tested everything out it was coming in loud and clear.
And we heard from one of our listeners from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada and the stream is now working again. Would be interested in hearing from anyone else in Canada that can or can not hear the stream.
The advertisements are there, but they allow us to publish our streams to basically unlimited listeners. That would never be possible with some of the other solutions out there.
We are looking into possibly having a closed private stream that does not have any advertising. It would be limited because the cost would be great. But if we can figure something out, we will do it. Stay tuned.
We've got some good news about our issue with Canadian listeners. Very soon we will be moving our main channels that are associated with this website to a new platform called SonixFM.
Don't worry, everything will be seamless on our website and on top of that there WILL BE NO ADVERTISEMENTS anymore.
We will, however, keep our Radionomy channels open with a closed playlist of some of the best songs we offer. In addition, we will once again be listed on TuneIn.com.
Highlander Radio is now available to our Canadian listeners. Be sure to tune in using the links on our player page. Just click LISTEN NOW to get the new links (located in our header).
If you try to access Highlander Radio through Radionomy you will receive a closed playlist of music - it will be maintained over there, but the music will not match what is on our website.
We expect to move Celtic Moon, Celt-Rock-Radio and Celtic Dance Tavern over the new 1-2 weeks.
There will be no effect to our U.S. listeners. You can connect using the links on our player page. On the backend, what runs the streams, is being relocated to the SonixFM servers.
Be sure to tune in using the links on our website:
Also our Celtic Radio Network APP and Mobile website have already been updated for Highlander Radio. There is no need to redownload, the changes will appear automatically.