60-Day Reprieve For Internet Royalty Rate Hike

Chickan writes "The Copyright Royalty Board has officially posted its ruling on Internet royalty rates in the Federal Register. However, the organization has pushed back the due date for royalty payments to kick in from May 15 to July 15. The publication of this information also begins the official 30-day period for appeals. NPR is slated to file an appeal in this timeframe."

The Rich get richer...

If the appeal doesn't take hold, all the little guys will be forced out and the majority of stations will play NOT ONLY tons of advertisements, but also only popular music that brings mainstream listeners.

If they base it on PROFIT gained by advertisements, rather than per song, per user... it will GREATLY improve the chances of smaller bands to be recognized. The only people benefitting are those grabbing the cash, and the already popular musicians and stations... the little guy will get pushed out.

The majority of stations online aren't even making a lot of money, rather than entertaining a specific genre of music.

Please, write your senators.

Turnabout is fair play

How about instead of rejecting the eventual return of royalties, we "support it", but keep extending the future date when they are supposed to start applying?

You know, like Disney always seems to manage with copyright expiration.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

Well, I think you have the right idea...
However THIS is what I would suggest.

Require RADIO to pay these fees as well, and remove any option for a negotiated deal with individual studios. Make everyone pay the same fees...

Terrestrial Radio has a much bigger lobby, and if they had to pay similar fees, they would fight this every step of the way. This would force the established media to fight for the rights of the new media... because they have been lumped together.

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Or maybe the stations can negotiate the deals directly with whatever artists are not signed up with major labels. Frankly, I no longer see the need for the labels altogether. It would costs the artist a few % to have a professional negotiate with the radio

Re:The Rich get richer...

Dude, I've purchased more music since listening to Pandora than I had in the previous four years. I've found some really interesting off-the-wall/radar artists with their service, and have spent approximately $130 in iTunes and amazon (via the pandora affiliate links so they get some c-c-c-cash) on their albums in the past 8 months. The RIAA gets their money, maybe, but I want my music. It's anecdotal, but it proves a certain point: internet radio helps people find obscure music; obscure but good music drives sales; sales make more money. In the long run, it will only be good for the music industry: too bad the RIAA is looking out for the suits who want to bolster the status quo this quarter instead of looking to what will make profits rain down six quarters or six years from now. Mainly because they're smelly old men who are only going to live for a few more years anyways, so who cares about future profits? GIMME MY LEAR JET NOW!

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The only reason I'm really concerned is that my friend actually runs a radio station that promotes local and upcoming bands. They send in music to them, they play NO profit gaining advertisements and send all of their extra CD's and gathered donations (po

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I completely agree! I don't know of any online radio stations that promote local NYC bands, although I'm sure there are hundreds - I don't fall into the hipster crowd anyway, so it probably wouldn't matter ;) I'm just pointing out that my anecdotal experi

Why should I lobby in favor of the RIAA's clients?

The corporate studios don't sign that many artists and (according to a Chicago Tribune article I read some years ago) a lot of the artists they sign are indebted to the label for many albums. So long before the listener gets any chance to hear the artist, the label has them under their thumb. The RIAA's legal antics against listeners (often bringing cases before researching evidence against them) is covered here on /.. I'm left to wonder why I should write anyone in support of making it easier to help these labels by making it more likely that their music will be played.

I'm left to think that we should let them raise the rates as high as they think the market will bear. I'd rather work with artists who license their recordings to me so that I may non-commercially share them verbatim with others in any medium. I stopped listening to radio (online and over the air) because what I was hearing is only the "popular music that brings mainstream listeners" (in other words, as far as I can hear that's what they're playing now before any new fee schedule). This is not what I want to hear. Often the online stations I heard were merely retransmissions of what was being played over the air.

Contrary to what FreePress.net is claiming in their emails, I don't believe this means the end of Internet radio. I think it means the end of RIAA tracks on Internet radio and it opens the way for unsigned artists and tracks from labels that don't screw the artist (like Magnatune).

Re:Why should I lobby in favor of the RIAA's clien

You are not being asked to lobby in favour of just "the RIAA's clients." The "performance royalty" is collected for all songs played, regardless of whether the artist is signed with an RIAA-affiliated label or not. An Internet broadcaster's choice is to ei

Pub. affairs & non-US still make it overbroad.

It seems that you and another poster discuss the issue as if only music is broadcast over the Internet (such as public affairs) and that this means anything outside the US. Perhaps that's just the American bias of /..

Re:Why should I lobby in favor of the RIAA's clien

You really don't understand what SoundScan is. It's not RIAA music that's covered by SoundScan. It's *ALL* music. SoundScan is being set up to handle the royalties from a *compulsory* license for music. It doesn't matter if you don't want to be covere

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s/SoundScan/SoundExchange/g;

sorry. typing too fast.

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Maybe not.

If it becomes too expensive to play mainstream/signed artists, then perhaps we'll see a boatload of Internet radio stations spring up that exclusively play indie music.

Hmmmm...I'd better go research streaming audio feeds -- I think I see a

The retroactive part

This whole thing is disgusting.

But I have a question about the retroactive part. It seems that not only will stations have to pay more in the future, but they have to pay more for the past year or so. How is that legal? Also, does anyone know how it would be enforced? If a station just shuts down and doesn't pay for the past year, then what?

Re:The retroactive part

If a station just shuts down and doesn't pay for the past year, then what?

That's when the RIAA hop into their souped-up DeLorean, zip back into the past, and make sure your parents never met.

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The last time I checked, ex post facto laws were prohibited. It's a bit like the IRS retroactively regulating that you really owed an extra $2000 on your taxes for the past five years, even though at the time you didn't.

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AFAIK, the original royalty agreement expired at the start of 2006; they've been operating ever since in limbo since a new agreement hasn't gone to in effect. The new agreement then is retroactive because it includes the period of time where they didn't ha

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Wait what? What the fuck?

Retro active law? Where the is your constitution now?

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Co

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It seems that not only will stations have to pay more in the future, but they have to pay more for the past year or so. How is that legal?

The old rates expired in 2005. Stations continued to pay those rates knowing they would owe whatever the difference wa

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unless you right a law that makes them legal...

internet radio

I work at a volunteer run radio station in CT. One of our DJs also runs an internet radio station with several volunteer DJs as well. He has to shut down due to this rate hike. He said it went from about 700 dollars a year to 15g a year.

Or...

....61 days for those of you using the modern Gregorian Calender.

Calendar

....61 days for those of you using the modern Gregorian Calender.

Yes, makes your Gregorians nice and glossy [reference.com].

"You know what this'll cost you? Thirty days... hath September, April, June, and Montana. All the rest have cold weather, except in the summer, which isn't often!"

Voice your unhappiness!

Go here [capwiz.com] to protest this bullcrap.

Re:Voice your unhappiness!

I'm constantly posting here to explain why copyrights and patents are vital for continued innovation and creativity, and why you "Music and movies suck so that's why I have to steal them!" people are idiots. And I wrote to my representatives the minute Pandora sent me the above link. All the music I've purchased over the last few years is stuff I've learned about from Pandora, Live365 and Garageband, and keeping it legal is what allows me to talk down to you whiny thieves.

If you don't take action on this, you've forfeited your right to ever post moronic "Teh RIAA is suing teh singal mothers!" comments again.

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If you don't take action on this, you've forfeited your right to ever post moronic "Teh RIAA is suing teh singal mothers!" comments again.

Hey, I'd love to, because there are some great US-based internet radio stations I love to listen to. Could you remind me who my Congressman/woman is here in London, England? Oh, wait, I'd come under foreign affairs, wouldn't I? Secretary Rice seems terrib

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I purchase all of my music. Every song on my computer, iPod, every burned CD, is a copy of music that I own. I do listen to internet radio stations and I enjoy them. I do not, however, enjoy much pop music. No rapper of the day, none of today's best co

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I'm constantly posting here to explain why copyrights and patents are vital for continued innovation and creativity

I agree with this, but only to a point. I don't believe that infinite copyright is vital for continued innovation, and I don't think that fair use should go out the window just because violating copyright got a little easier. I don't mind copyright one

Re:Voice your unhappiness!

Damnit. I'm forfeiting mod points to respond, but you hit a major pet peeve of mine there.

You do not get to define the terms of a debate. You do not get to say "If you do not take a particular action that I like you to take, you have lost the ability to debate this without being a flaming hypocrite." You can also lay off the self-aggrandizing holier-than-thou soapboxing, but I don't really care about that.

  I'm probably not going to contact my representative on this issue. I may, because I think this is as much bullshit as everyone else, but frankly I have so much shit going on in my life right now that I just have absolutely no desire to do so. On the other hand, I decided years ago that I wouldn't give the RIAA or the MPAA a single cent, nor would I give them mindshare by pirating. I'm not going to say I've never broken that, but only twice. (It helps that I prefer books and videogames to music and movies.) And you're saying that if I don't take a single action you think I should take I lose the right to bitch about the RIAA? Um. No.

Personally, I'm also not convinced that patents and copywrites are entirely vital to creativity, but that's another debate entirely.

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You do not get to define the terms of a debate. You do not get to say "If you do not take a particular action that I like you to take, you have lost the ability to debate this without being a flaming hypocrite."

I agree. It's like people who say "if you don

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I am a lot like you - I would not listen to most of the mainstream big label music if it was free (oh wait broadcast radio is, and I refuse to listen to it), yet I buy more CD's today than I did 10 years ago. Why? di.fm - chillout channel plays great music

You know what I'd like to see...

Can't Internet radio stations just simply refuse to play RIAA music then? This would be great. We'd get stations full of independent artists and labels. I want to see billboard music disappear with what they're doing. They're trying to cripple and cont

They can refuse to play, but...

Can't Internet radio stations just simply refuse to play RIAA music then?

Through SoundExchange, they'll still collect [dailykos.com] from the Internet radio stations anyway.

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Unfortunately due to the wonder of the compulsory license, that is not an option unless you individually contact every copyright holder and make a deal. This is because the RIAA (or SoundExchange to be more specific) has been given the (questionablly) leg

An alternate solution?

Maybe I'm nutty, but would it be possible for an Internet broadcaster to switch to some sort of submission-based format? In that way, artists can submit their own work to the station. Through this process they'd not only hook their submissions to the info on where to send the royalty check (bypassing the RIAA/Soundexchange scam) but also agree to some actually sane royalty rate, terms-of-service style. On an Internet where MySpace, MP3.com, and the like are full of people who are already putting tracks out there for free, where countless bands with their own actual websites are paying hosting fees out of their pockets to put their free downloads out there, and where most of these people would love the chance to get themselves heard on popular Internet radio stations, it seems to me a broadcaster could build up a respectable playlist in this manner.

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I call bullshit. That is unenforceable. If, for example, I had a band, and we wanted to stream OUR music and our music only...how can RIAA possibly lay claim to any of that? It's not like I'd be 'broadcasting' in the sense of radio on the public airwave

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This may be a dumb question, but could independent "label" sites such as CD Baby or DMusic (home of boycott-riaa.com, not to be confused with Emusic) set up an easy way to allow internet radio stations to play music from their artists at a better price? I

Here's hoping!

I really, really hope the Internet Radio Equality Act [arstechnica.com] will go through ASAP for this, or it'll likely become a devastating blow to most serious Internet radio stations out there. :-/

Congress should smack the shit...

Congress needs to smack the shit out of the Copyright Board for this stunt. As in abolish them entirely and make the payment returns retroactive. And to revoke laws that help entertainment monopolies like the RIAA. That'd be sweet justice AND help America

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Given past performance of the US Congress when intelligence in legislative action is required involving the entertainment industry, we can expect Congress to not only NOT intervene, if they do it will likely NOT be in the consumers' favor.

RTFA

Given past performance of the US Congress when intelligence in legislative action is required involving the entertainment industry, we can expect Congress to not only NOT intervene, if they do it will likely NOT be in the consumers' favor.

At some point thi

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True. But in a capitalistic system that ran amock, the big bucks get to make the laws and buy justice.

Everything old is new again...

Local DJ-driven radio is all but dead at this point anyway. The idea of using radio to actually engage listeners, as opposed to playing a rather fixed set list of "hits", is something most stations have given up on. Up here, the Detroit NPR affiliate, WDET, went so far as to eliminate most of its music programming (including the phenomenal Alternate Take, hosted by Liz Copeland, and some legendary jazz shows that have been staples for that community) in favor of becoming a clone of another NPR affiliate that we already receive in the same area.

Radio and the larger music labels have given up their role as taste-makers in lieu of pandering to more conservative audience taste. A local DJ can afford to challenge you. A large multi-station enterprise has little choice but to play it safe. Even the satellite radio stations have woefully "safe" playlists, for all the chatter about endless choice.

I dare say most people reading slashdot gave up on the idea of finding new music on the radio a while ago - and the rest of the public is only half a step behind. The unfortunate consequence will be the larger record labels and the multi-station radio networks are going to fight technology tooth and nail for a fight they already gave up on twenty years ago.

Payola used to be a scandal. Now it's merely a business model.

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Two words: college radio. They can play anything they want, and they do. That's about all I listen to anymore, including lots of online streaming college radio stations, and they've turned me onto lots, and lots, and lots of new music, precisely because

It's not just royalties.

Pandora [techdirt.com] is being forced to block non-US listeners.

From the article:

Pandora.com, a popular streaming music recommendation service (which is already facing some challenges due to the new webcaster rates) is being forced to block all non-US users of its se

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I seem to remember pandora requires a zip code to verify you're American. If you live abroad just put in 000000 and you're set! At least you could, I don't know if they still accept it, but they did when I signed up.

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I assume you mean 'contact'.

The only artists interested in overthrowing the RIAA are the ones that don't benefit from their tactics. If you expect mainstream artists to overthrow the RIAA, you're going to have to PROVE to them that the RIAA is bad for the

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If Internet radio is turned into the playground for rich corporations, they'll be locked into the RIAA for the foreseeable future. Who benefits from that?

Let's see:

Shareholders of RIAA & big media companies (Clearchannel, etc).
Boardmembers and execs a

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Coln. Mustard in the kitchen with the revolver.

In other news, Congress continues to sluggishly review sluggishly review [loc.gov] H.R.2060: Internet Radio Equality Act. If you write a senator (or actually, house member) perhaps one should mention support for this.

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butt technology.. i made myself laugh on that typo.. what the hell is butt technology?!

Those of us in at the Tp Research Institute for Environmental Responsibility think making sure that a single square of TP is sufficient for every bathroom visit is no