Internet Radio Will Go Silent on June 26th

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!

I'm not even in the music industry, but I'll be shutting down my web site (w/a notice explaining why & a link if someone has one) on that day to bring awareness to this issue.

Re:Solidarity!

This is an interesting notion. Voluntarily shutting down blogs, podcast sites and others can maybe help bring some attention to the general public about how seriously worried content creators are about this.

No Kidding

Shut off the whole freakin' internet for a day in protest.
I'm all for it. Everybody should at least try having a real life for at least one 24-hour period anyway.

And in other news

.... five users wonder what happened to their favorite web site.

Re:

I thought that as well, until I saw the list of participants on savenetradio.org. They have some big names like Yahoo Music, Pandora, and Rhapsody on there, so a lot of people are going to notice this IF they don't decide to change their minds at the last

Re:And in other news

.... five users wonder what happened to their favorite web site.

I'm sure those that listen to Internet radio will know ahead of time and are outraged by this decision. The rest of those that surf the Internet, those that make the laws, and just about everyone else (minus those that will see a financial gain from this ruling) don't know or care to know about what will happen to Internet radio.

And unfortunately it's not +1 Funny either.

newsflash

USA != Internet.

That is all.

Ob

Thousands of U.S. webcasters plan to turn off the music and go silent this Tuesday, June 26th

Coming up after the break, John Cage's estate launches biggest copyright infringement suit ever.

What does this mean for...

... internet radio stations that weren't running for profit, but simply for the enjoyment of broadcasting? How does soundexchange propose to get blood from a stone? Or would that be disallowed completely, even if the person wasn't broadcasting any music that they might have say over?

Re:What does this mean for...

Or would that be disallowed completely, even if the person wasn't broadcasting any music that they might have say over?

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.

Re:

... internet radio stations that weren't running for profit, but simply for the enjoyment of broadcasting?

Hippies and communists, the lot of them. Burn them I say! Burn the witch!

Seriously, they'll be silenced, so that you may return to your regularly scheduled monoculture of Britney Spears' current clone.

except for Last.fm

Pandora, Yahoo music and many others are participating except for CBS-owned Last.fm [techcrunch.com]

Re:except for Last.fm

Last.fm is, at least historically, a UK company. Since their servers (and the music) is broadcast from the UK, I'm not sure this will affect them. The problem now, of course, is that they're now owned by CBS. Still, with Lastfm being a UK branch/division, they should be safe.

But of course, IANAL.

And as a paid subscriber to Pandora.com

This will piss me off if I've got no music. I *paid* to listen to the music there. Will they cut me off?

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?

Perfect

That's exactly the point. To get the attention of selfish people like you who will only take action when their daily routine is affected.

Maybe instead of complaining to us, or to pandora, you should complain to Congress. Make the need for such outages unnecessary, and we'll stop promoting them.

Re:except for non-US radio

The problem with Government is that they forgot they were trying to legislate an international network.

Radio stations like EBM Radio [ebm-radio.de] are purely unaffected mostly by this ruling. Of course they don't play much MPAA music as it is (otherwise why would we lis

Meanwhile...

Magnatune and other *truly* indie publishers go on business as usual.

The RIAA doesn't need another 500 "internet stations." This might be the biggest non-event since the breakup of the Smiths.

They call it "internet radio"

because, like the radio, it broadcasts a stream, users 'tune in' to the stream. The stream does not reposition for new connections that have 'tuned in' with the exception of an obligatory "THANKS FOR LISTENING TO THIS STATION" or whatever. There is no in

In other News...

The Copyright Royalty Board has changed its initials to SCO...

Here's a good link

If you want to find your local congress critter, and ping them on the subject, Go here [capwiz.com]. This link takes you to a nice little cgi app that takes your zip code, and gives you the phone numbers for your house and senate rep's, along with a short script of talking points. If the Internet Radio Equality Act, (S. 1353 in the senate, and H.R. 2060 in the house) can get some sponsors, and get passed, we're all in much better shape.

Retroactive?

So, you know those prices we told you to pay last year? We were totally kidding about that, it definitely should have been higher then. So go ahead and fork over the rest of the money you owe us.


Seriously, though, how in the heck can a price increase be retroactive?

Re:Retroactive?

The original rates were set for a five year period. After the five year period was up, new rates still had not been determined, so the old ones were used in the interim. These are the new rates, which take effect beginning when the previous five year period ended. Basically everyone paying the old rates knew full well that they were going to go up and be "retroactive", it is not something that was just sprung on them.

There is a lot of bullshit and propaganda on both sides of this, don't take either side's word for anything.

Re:Retroactive?

Bullshit. It was still sprung on them. Even if they knew that new rates would be
determined whenever enough palms had been greased, they had no way of knowing to
what extent people were going to fuck them over. So, once the term of the old rates
lapsed, what were they supposed to do? Shut down, because Amazing Kreskin^WAC
says they should have known they'd be screwed? Or keep on going, expecting things
not to be too different?

Compare, for instance, a renter and a landlord. If I have a lease with my landlord
to rent for $500 per month for a year and I make those payments everythings fine.
If at the end of the year I continue on as a tenant at will, and still pay $500 per
month, then everything's fine. The landlord cannot come back in three months and tell
me that the new rent is $750 per month and I owe him $750 in back rent; regardless
of whether or not he told me when the lease lapsed that he'd be raising the rent but
hadn't decided how hard he wanted to screw me yet.

Re:

I've been wondering the same thing myself. How are they going to enforce those payments, exactly? The most they MIGHT be able to do is shut the radio station down, but that sure isn't the same thing.

Re:

Except they won't shut internet radio down. They will only shut down internet radio broadcasters within the US... there will still be plenty to choose from in Canada in Europe.

Re:Retroactive?

just pay them with retro money, like Greek Drachma or DDR Mark...

Re:Retroactive?

I run idobi Radio. We're an alternative/rock station that's doing fairly well, in terms of popularity.

The rates set by the royalty board is incredibly high and completely unfair. I agree I'm bias on the issue, but if the current rates are upheld, we would be required to pay $900,000/year just in royalties.

The current rates, if applied to traditional radio, would require a station like KROQ in Los Angeles to pay $1.4 billion/year just in royalties. Last year, they mad $67 million in revenue. If one of the most successful traditional radio station cannot afford these royalties, how can any internet radio station that still developing a revenue base be able to?

http://www.idobi.com/news/?p=25408 [idobi.com]

Re:Retroactive?

I don't think you're getting the point of this law. The corporations who support it don't run internet radio and they don't want it to continue. This is the easiest way for terrestrial radio companies to make "Internet Radio" illegal. If it's too expensive for your to create and run "myradio.com" then everyone will be forced back to 97.9 FM and they can continue their monopoly of the airwaves.

Re:

If that were indeed the plan, it would be by far the most stupid plan ever devised in the history of the world. After all, even if the terrestrial radio companies got every single radio station in the United States to shut down, the rest of the entire pla

I wrote both my state sentators...

You want a politician to respond to you? Snail mail is *still* the best way. Take ideas from a template if you must, but make most of the stuff, if not all of it up yourself. Be concise, but be sure and make your point. Bitching about a situation is obviously easier, but I got a reply back from Senator Boxer about a week ago (with the original letter sent in late May), which stated the following:


Thank you for writing to me regarding proposed changes to the assessment of royalty fees that Internet radio broadcasters pay to musicians and record labels. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

As you probably know, the federal Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has released its plan for charging online radio broadcasters for royalties. The Internet Radio Equality act of 2007 (S.1353), which was recently introduced in the Senate, would nullify the CRB's proposal and prevent the new royalties assessment plan from taking effect.

S.1353 is currently being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Please be assured that I will take your comments under advisement, should this legislation come before the full Senate.

Again, thank you for writing to me. Please keep in touch with me about this and any other issue of concern to you.

Re:

Fax it - snail mail is held for weeks for terrorism checks. Fax the D.C. office and the local office(s).

Re:

You know, I get almost-identical form letters whenever I email my senators.

Ridiculous

The fact that this price increase is retroactive absolutely blows my mind, especially when you consider how large of a price increase this will be. Retroactive changes to the law is one of the hallmarks of a failed legal system. How many radio broadcasters will even have the kind of money that is now being demanded of them?

Some useful sites. USE THEM!

This current plan to hike royalty rates would be apocalyptic for internet radio. Its retroactive effect alone (back to January 1, 2006) would bankrupt all but the huge players.

Here are some useful sites where you can find out what you can do. If nothing else, contact your congressional representatives and tell them to save internet radio by sponsoring the Internet Radio Equality Act.

http://www.savenetradio.org/ [savenetradio.org]
http://www.savenetradio.org/act_now/index.html [savenetradio.org]
http://www3.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/callalert /index.tt?alertid=9731806 [capwiz.com]

As far as Utah goes...

I now know who cares and who doesn't. I got a letter back within about a week from Jim Matheson, our Representative, who seemed very adamant about how wrong this proposed legislation is. He even went on in detail about why he wanted internet radio to stay the way is is (or become free, even). Bob Bennett didn't respond. Orrin Hatch, who is himself a recording artist (in a loose usage of the term), seemed to be sidestepping the issue in the letter he sent back. It was almost as though he agreed with the rate hikes. How someone who gets paid to make music can support the RIAA is beyond me. Though I guess Roarin' Orrin's reply didn't really surprise me, I guess there are things in life you never get used to.

This is Just a Taste of What is to Come

This issue is emblematic of a much larger phenomenon that is only going to increase over time. That phenomenon is the increasing gap between modern society and what the bureaucracy perceives it to be. The government had enough trouble when change was slow. Now as the speed of change gets quicker by the week, the out-of-touch nature of government becomes not just an issue to laugh about, but one to be of great concern. Political ideology combined with an insularity from change will stifle those who are the best and the brightest at the expense of those that are the most powerful.

Obigatory Ogg Vorbis request

They should really be using Ogg Vorbis, because it's VBR nature means it encodes silence just that much better than MP3 or AAC ;-)

SHH to Canada...

The US stations could set up SSH tunnels to servers in Canada - 'internet underground railroad radio stations'...

WCPE Classical Station getting hit.

Here's a letter from the gen manager at WCPE:

http://theclassicalstation.org/save_our_streams.sh tml [theclassicalstation.org]

Interesting about who has said things about this

Now I'm going to say two words that will automatically get me modded down around here, but Rush Limbauqh had a segment about this on his show a few weeks ago when he was explaining why internet feeds contained minutes of silence during song parodies, etc. and about this new policy and how it was going to kill internet radio and wasn't fair. He explained that for his show, it could easily translate into $36,000 a day worth of royalities that would be hard for even a show with a large audience (and high ad rates) to cover.

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.

The music industry is ass backwards.

Hasn't the music industry realized yet that without radio (in any form) they would have zero distribution for new music and fall flat on their faces? If anything, these radio stations should be paid by the record labels for playing their songs for free and getting them much needed exposure, especially when it comes to the next big pop artist. Unbelievable.

Oh they can kiss my ass

As the operator of a synthpop and darkwave internet radio station [mirrorshades.org] (plug!) myself, my response is "kiss my ass". Like most other stations, I broadcast things that aren't ever going to be heard on conventional radio, giving (relatively) niche or obscure artists that much more free exposure. I know this works for two reasons:

1. I myself have bought albums after hearing certain artists' songs on other net radio stations -- music I would never, ever, ever have heard otherwise except perhaps in the drunken haze of a goth club.

2. Several independent artists have sent me singles and even entire albums and other promo kits, encouraging me to put them in rotation. One synthpop artist [jamesdstark.com] wrote:

Thanks I appreciate the exposure, it's hard to get the music out as an independent artist which is why I'm trying to get radioplay. The CD is the mail.

And another [redflag.org] said, after sending me some tracks and I liked them but mentioned I'd never heard of this group before:

Yeah, that is what we are experiencing with Red Flag. The darkwave scene
just loves the music but we need to really get the message out there.

This has happened dozens of times. It's good for the artists who are trying to get noticed; it's good for the audience who gets to discover new music; it's good for the broadcaster cause it's just fun. I get permission from many of the labels or artists to play their stuff, and when I don't, well, it's a freaking 96k broadcast that can't be copied without some technical know-how (certainly much more difficult than jamming a tape into your radio and hitting "record"). Exactly who is being harmed here?

You know, there ain't no Benjamens in the net broadcasting trade. We do this for fun and the love of the music. The RIAA's outmoded and antiquated business models, and their continued attempts to strangle the life out of emergent technologies, is absolutely appalling. I'll continue to broadcast from my host in Germany and here's a big screw you to the suits. I don't make a single cent off my broadcast, and I don't play the kind of music that would come close to competing with the mass-appeal fare on the normal airwaves. You'll never get a dime from me.

This law will outsource our radio...

This law only kills internet radio in the United States, it doesn't affect internet radio stations outside the US. I already listen to stations outside the US, and I'm sure there will be a heckuva lot more if this legislation passes.

So, in effect, this law will only serve to outsource these stations to other countries -- places where the RIAA can't extract any royalties at all. Brilliant, RIAA, brilliant...

Ridiculousness with an easy solution

Let mp3/ogg/wma/whatever propagate where they will. If you never pay for music now, you never will. And then there are those like me who like to sample things before spending money on it. If it's something I won't listen to more than a few times here and there, I likely am not going to buy it. Why should I? I'd be happy to just listen to it on the Internet streams or radio when it plays. No need to own something like that. Of the mp3s that I have downloaded, I've either bought the CD used (or borrowed from a friend if even the used price was ridiculous ... usually the 'one good song on the whole disk' situations), or simply removed the downloaded stuff, since it isn't something I listened to much, and if I did, I'd want better quality.

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.

Re:RIAA Wins and Loses at the same time

Exactly what do they think they've won here?

Distribution Control.

Re:Supply and demand

Yeah, but why does this apply to Internet radio and not broadcast radio? The principle you described is the model for broadcast radio, yet broadcast radio does not pay this way. This is about the record industry eliminating internet radio. The record industry controls what is played over broadcast radio, there are too many internet radio stations for them to get that kind of control over. The other problem is that the amount of the pay-per-listener fee exceeds what advertisers are willing to pay per listener.

Re:Supply and demand

Internet radio differs from broadcast radio in the same way that recording tapes from a CD differs from uploading to a P2P network: you can reach thousands more people, and you can get perfect copies of the broadcasts by stream ripping. Hence they use this excuse as a far greater potential revenue loss as compared to regular radio, which offers many less options in terms of distribution.

Fair enough. But internet radio stations are simply asking to pay the same rates as satellite radio, which also offers a digital feed that can be captured by some consumer devices. (Granted, many of these devices are encumbered with DRM-ish "features.")

if it's licensed by the FCC

17 USC 114(d)(1)(A) [copyright.gov] exempts "a nonsubscription broadcast transmission" from the exclusive right under section 106(6). I would assume that "broadcast" is defined as a radio transmission licensed by the FCC, not a packet stream sent to IPv4 address x.x.x.255 [wikipedia.org]

Re:does this affect SIRI/XM streaming

does this royalty regime apply to the streams from XM and Sirius?

The short answer is "no." In fact, internet radio stations would much rather have it the other way around: they want to pay what satellite radio pays. Right now, they're paying twice the satellite rate, and the new increases would push internet radio rates astronomically higher, retroactive to January 1, 2006.

In effect, the RIAA (through the Copyright Royalty Board) is trying to kill internet radio.

Re:What can I do?

Rather than writing you representive, in this case it might be better to write your favorite band. Tell them which albums you have and the concerts you went to, and then tell them you can't buy any more of their CDs because their music is covered by SoundExchange. Ask when they will release an album under creative commons.