Shaken Internet Radio Stations Face Specter of New Fees Sunday

[Robbien]

Source: WaPo

The Copyright Royalty Board, which is part of the Library of Congress, decided in March to almost triple royalty rates by 2010 and impose an annual $500 fee per station or channel. The decision was urged by SoundExchange, an organization created by the recording industry.

In recent months, some smaller Web stations shut down in anticipation of the higher fees. More say they will close as a result of the court decision.

Web radio stations and their listeners have been lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would void the Copyright Royalty Board's decision and use a system that would assess royalties based on a station's revenue. But there has not been any legislative action on the proposal.

. . .

Royalties for Internet radio differ greatly from its satellite and terrestrial counterparts. Satellite radio companies pay a percentage of their revenue. Under copyright laws, land-based radio stations, traditional AM and FM radio, pay nothing.

. . .

Jake Sommers, 47, a DJ in Columbus, Ohio, shut down his hobby jazz trumpet station, http://jazzplayerradio.com, on April 30 when he found out it would cost him $2,000 a month to operate. Sommers had 20,000 listeners a month. "We never made a dime," he said. "It was a labor of love. Everything we made we put right back into radio station. It was a bunch of trumpet geeks playing music for other trumpet geeks."





Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/12/AR2007071202169.html

---

Although several zero-hours have come and gone before, the real last final deadline for saving internet radio is now.

PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES RIGHT AWAY and urge them to support the Internet Equality Act. Go to http://www.capwiz.com /... to find the phone numbers of your Senators and Representative.

For your House representatives, the bill is H.R. 2060. For your Senator, the bill is S. 1353 . Tell them to fight to bring the bill to the floor for an immediate vote. If the line is busy, please call back. Call until you know your voice has been heard.

Your voices are what have gotten us this far - Congress has listened. Now, they are our only hope.

also see
www.Savenetradio.org

[enigmatic]

1. We won!

I got this from savenetradio.com tonight!:

Online Radio Is Saved; SoundExchange Will Not Enforce New Royalty Rates on Sunday!

By Eliot Van Buskirk EmailJuly 12, 2007 | 7:35:30 PMCategories: Save Net Radio

At today's Congressional hearing about the new rates for online radio that would essentially destroy it (as readers of this blog already know), SoundExchange, which was scheduled to receive the new royalty payments on Monday morning (since the enforcement date falls on a Sunday), made a startling statement.

The SoundExchange executive promised -- in front of Congress -- that SoundExchange will not enforce the new royalty rates. Webcasters will stay online, as new rates are hammered out.

I just spoke with Pandora founder Tim Westergren, who expressed relief that Pandora wouldn't have to shut down on Sunday in response to the new rates. He said, "It was getting pretty close. I always had underlying optimism that sanity was going to prevail, but I was beginning to wonder."

He said everyone who called their Congress person about this should feel that they had an effect on the process:

"This is a direct result of lobbying pressure, so if anyone thinks their call didn't matter, it did. That's why this is happening." The flyer DiMA distributed to Congress today probably helped a bit too, but overall, it appears Congress intervened due to pressure from web radio listeners.

Funnily enough, Westergren told me this mere hours after a representative of SoundExchange said
that the new rates are "etched in stone." Twice. Evidently not.

Westergren had more to say, lending insight into a process that was largely opaque to non-participants. Apparently, the per-channel minimum fees mandated by the Copyright Royalty Board were never taken very seriously by those involved. They've now been taken off the table completely, saving Pandora, Live365, and other multicasters from their most imminent threat.

"No one thought those per station fees were remotely rational. It only makes sense that they're being taken off the table."

As for the Copyright Royalty Board? They're entirely cut out of the process, having set the rates and then refused a rehearing. Going forward without the royalties being collected, SoundExchange and webcasters will negotiate a new royalty rate with Congress looking over their shoulder -- "and last but not least, the public looking over Congress's shoulder." Alternatively, Congress now has time to consider the Internet Radio Equality Act, which would set webcaster royalties at 7.5 percent of revenue and allow them to continue operating pretty much as they have been.

Either way, this is a big win for webcasters and their listeners.

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/07/breaking-news-o.html

I was sweating this out for my own station, and I couldn't be happier....

[Robbien]

3. Wow. I am overwhelmed

Thanks. Thanks so much for the news.

This is great!

:toast:

[enigmatic]

4. I'm ecstatic

Radio Enigma just celebrated our 4th birthday this spring and we have listeners all over the world now. We would have had to close down because of the royalty increase, too; I'm very happy, and very relieved...

[msongs]

2. they could play their own music or that which is NOT licensed

personally I think the new law is a bad deal as these people keep alive music that is not popular or current but the logic used to defend them is severely flawed.

they are using somebody else's music for their own use and possibly their own gain if they are gaining financially from their sites or because people come to listen to their "stations".

their stations cannot be defended on grounds of fair use, which allows you to make a copy of a recording for your own use, like to play in your car or garage. Fair use does not include sharing a recording with 24 million of your closest friends.

to claim there is no alternative is false. they can create their own music, share with others who create their own music,
or try and get new rates and/or seperate licenses for what they like, or play music that is in the public domain.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[Gregorian]

5. Once again we've fended off the corporate greed.

But like an army, they'll keep coming at us.

There are very few things I love on planet earth. One of them is internet radio. It has saved me during the years of living far from the human congestion of the city.

They pulled this crap around 2002, and I suspect in another few years we'll see it again. In fact, probably sooner.

Internet radio is a fantastic phenomenon. I wake up in the morning to radio at MIT, and then switch over to UC Berkeley, and later Loyola in Los Angeles. Stanford has a show called Wednesday Night Live complete with a webcam.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to tax the little independent guys. The only purpose it would serve is to kill them.

Just remember, the FCC isn't for anything but paving a path for the corporations. In fact the same can be said for other things like Fish and Game. Just there for the corporations. Not us. But almost nobody knows that stuff. You have to learn it first hand.

We have the power.

[Kagemusha]

6. Uh, are the fees still retroactive to last year?

THAT is the part that blew my mind. Jake Sommers, 47, above is going to be in for the shock of his life.

[Robbien]

7. Appears maybe not

The savenetradio.com notice says the Copyright Royalty Board guys are SOL because they were hardnosed and unwilling to compromise (SOP for loyal bushies). I believe these were the guys pushing the retroactive fees.

The notice says the negotiations are to be determined by SoundExchange and webcasters with Congress looking over their shoulder. Finally, more rational minds sitting at the table.

[JCMach1]

8. How about going pirate? shouldn't be hard to use some of the same

technology that torrents, or distributed networks use for streaming audio...