The Death of U.S. Internet Radio?

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wheato
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The Death of U.S. Internet Radio?

#1 Post by wheato » Sat Jul 07, 2007 2:50 pm

WARNING: Long and a little boring, but it's kind of important to us I think, given our involvement with Yehoodi Radio, so please give it a read when you get a chance:

Are you guys keeping up with the issue of the new copyright royalty assessment rates and structures about to be applied to U.S.-based Interent Radio stations, and what they are probably about to do to U.S. Internet Radio in about a week -- namely, kill it off?

FAQ details are at http://www.saveourinternetradio.com/faq/ and at http://www.freepress.net/netradio/.

Back on March 2, a federally-appointed three-judge panel known as the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board (a part of the U.S. Library of congress which sets policy for rates and payments of royalties made for recorded music played over digital media systems) established new rates for the amount of money that should be paid for broadcast of songs over Internet Radio stations. The Board also changed the structure of how the fees are assessed (from a "percentage of revenue" to a "per-play/per-listener" scheme).

The changes have resulted in an increase of royalty fees that are so astoundingly high that it will be impossible for the vast majority of Internet radio stations to pay these fees. And because the payment is set in such a way that fees are retroactive to Jan. 1, 2006, this means that the date when the new assessment rate is scheduled to go in place – July 15, 2007 – on that date, most of these Internet broadcast stations will be instantly bankrupted, and will be forced to cease their transmissions immediately.

I had the privilege of being a featured guest DJ on Yehoodi Radio back in 2004, and have really enjoyed hearing other guest DJs and checking their playlists since then. I was also looking forward to hearing some of the new DJs suggested on the "Yehoodi Radio Wants You" thread. Well, unless things change quickly, after 7/15, Yehoodi Radio, as well as a thousand or so other broadcast channels on live365.com, will be wiped off the Internet map.

Other Internet broadcasters who will be forced to shut down include Pandora, Radio Paradise, Radio Dismuke, SomaFM, KCLW, RadioIO, WarpRadio, 3WK, Digitally Imported, AccuRadio, WAMU, KCLC, LuckySeven, HoundDog and a thousand others. All wiped out. Because of the hike in fees and (more importantly) the restructuring of the payment rates, the amount of royalty fees these stations will owe will increase anywhere from 300% to as much as 1,200%!!

(IMPORTANT: I don't believe the judges on the C*R*B are the bad guys here – they’re only misinformed; the problem people are, you guessed it, the R*I*A*A, along with Sound*Exchange, the "non-profit" entity that collects these royalty payments for distribution to composers and performers. Sound*Exchange is an operating branch of the R*I*A*A, so you're actually talking about the same organization here.)

A couple of weeks ago, two important pieces of legislation were introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, aimed at preventing these prohibitively high rates from going into effect and decimating the thousands of Internet radio providers across the U.S. The House Bill is H.R. 2060, and is known as the "Internet Radio Equality Act"; this bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-IL). Similar legislation was introduced in the Senate (S. 1353, the Wyden-Brownback bill) shortly afterward.

What do we do? If you love Internet Radio like I do and want to see it survive, write your Representative and Senators today. Go to this site to find out who your Representative is in the U.S. House of Representatives, and how to write letter or e-mail to him or her:

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Again, the Bill you should ask them to support is H.R. 2060.

Go to this site to find out about firing off a letter or e-mail to your U.S. Senator:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_i ... rs_cfm.cfm

The Senate Bill you should ask them to support is S. 1353 (the Wyden-Brownback bill).

If you would like a "template" of what to say, you can go to the website http://www.savenetradio.org, where they've prepared one you can use as a guideline. However, it always looks and sounds better if you use your own words.

Please consider getting involved in this. Up-and-coming independent artists and great artists of the past (including a lot of swing, jazz and blues artists), and music lovers everywhere, will be adversely affected when/if this royalty assessment scheme is put into effect and Internet Radio is forced into silence.

Just my thoughts. For a more historic (and slightly depressing) explanation, there's a really enlightening article by Cecily Mak from a legal commentary perspective at http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary ... 5_mak.html.

Also, tech blogger Doc Searls has written a really comprehensive (and far more depressing) article in Linux Journal -- the link for this article is: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000196.

Racetrack
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#2 Post by Racetrack » Sun Jul 29, 2007 12:53 am

A last minute "summit meeting" between Sound Exchange and representatives of the Internet broadcast industry resulted in a truce that so far has kept Internet radio alive. But this is only a truce, not a long-term agreement and the politics continue.

To keep up with all this, go to Radio & Internet Newsletter at:

www.kurthanson.com

After you bring yourself up to date on the issue, if you want to get politically active, go to:

www.savenetradio.org

They have a database that provides contact info for all senators and congressmen. All you have to do is type in your zip code.

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