Save Internet Radio!

[DudeAsInCool]

Save Internet Radio

If the RIAA and SoundExchange get their way, independent webcasting / Internet radio will soon cease to exist.

Why? Earlier today, the Copyright Royalty Board, the group overseeing statutory licensing for US-based internet radio stations, announced the new royalty rates for streaming radio performance rights. The board rejected the arguments made by webcasters and instead chose to adopt the proposal put forth by industry-backed SoundExchange, a royalty fee collection agency created by the RIAA.

The new rates are based on “performances” of songs. A “performance” is defined as one song being streamed to a single listener. In other words, a station with 1000 listeners is charged for 1000 performances of each song it broadcasts.

Further, the new rates, just announced today, are retroactive to 2006, and increase rapidly each year. The rates per performance are as follows:

$0.0008 in 2006

$0.0011 in 2007

$0.0014 in 2008

$0.0018 in 2009

At first glance, those seem like fairly small numbers: eight ten-thousandths of a cent, eleven ten-thousandths of a cent, and so on. When you actually do the math, however, you see the truth revealed. The average radio station plays 16 songs in an hour. Under this system, that would be equivalent to 16 performances.

0.0011 x 16 = 0.0176

Still a fairly small number - under two cents. But now assume this station has 1000 listeners. That means that, in one hour, the station would be billed for 16,000 performances.

0.0011 x 16000 = 17.60

That’s $17.60 an hour. Now we’re starting to see how expensive this truly is. Multiply that by 24 hours a day.

17.60 * 24 = 422.40

$422.40 a day. But there’s 365 days in a year.

422.40 * 365 = 154176

$154,176 for the year in performance royalties alone for a station with 1000 listeners. And that’s just for 2007: it gets even worse. In 2008, the cost rises to $193,536 for the year. In 2009, it goes up to $248,832. Even for a much smaller station, the royalties owed are huge.

Of course, these figures don’t include the mechanical rights, which must be licensed separately from an agency like SESAC or ASCAP, or the cost of bandwidth and server capacity. When you add all these costs together, you can easily see why nobody, save perhaps a megacorporation like AOL or Yahoo, could afford to pay these rates.

But wait - what’s this? The new rates apply retroactively to the beginning of 2006. In other words, someone who has been happily (and legally) running their small internet radio station for the past few years is suddenly going to be hit with possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional royalties owed. These bills could easily cause a small, independent broadcaster (and his family) to go bankrupt.

Meanwhile, over-the-air radio stations are still not required to pay one dime to the record industry for public performance rights. This reads like another tactic by the recording industry and corporate powers to exert control over anyone involved with music and an attempt to destroy independent broadcasting.

Whether you don’t want to see your favorite internet radio station go off the air, whether you just hate the RIAA, whatever the reason: please, help us get this senseless, greedy policy designed to do nothing but line the pockets of the record industry overturned. Write to, or better yet call, your representative, your senators, and the Copyright Royalty Board. Tell your friends and family, write on your blog, digg this - help get the word out and help to Save Internet Radio!

If you are a webcaster, we want to hear from you! How will this affect your station? What do you plan on doing? Drop us a line at [email protected]. If you’re someone involved with setting these rates, you’re also welcome to contact us and explain why you think these rates are fair.

We’ll be updating this site with more information as this progresses, so please check back and get involved!

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[Redneck4sure]

That is really bullshit. But then again, consider the source. They want to be paid for used cd sales and everything else. Slum isn't here right now so I will say it for her.

FUCK THE RIAA.

[CTC Command]

But wait - what’s this? The new rates apply retroactively to the beginning of 2006. In other words, someone who has been happily (and legally) running their small internet radio station for the past few years is suddenly going to be hit with possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional royalties owed. These bills could easily cause a small, independent broadcaster (and his family) to go bankrupt.

This smacks of being an ex post facto law. The RIAA can't overrule the Constitution. But that doesn't mean that the fucks won;t try it anyway.

[DudeAsInCool]

This is scarier than I first thought. Internet radio streams on public radio stations would not be exempt - they would have to pay a fee for each fee played and for each person listening. The very notion is beyond outrageous

[slum_goddess]

Slum isn't here right now so I will say it for her.

FUCK THE RIAA.

thank you, Redneck. and yeah, FUCK THE RIAA.

[DudeAsInCool]

The Wall Street Journal examines the issue:

..."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.)"

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[method77]

I really feel sorry for american broadcasters