Internet Radio Day of Silence

headless_ringmaster writes "TechTV's ScreenSavers today aired their interview with Wolf FM's Steve Wolf on the CARP bill and how it'll destroy Internet Radio. The Internet Radio Day of Silence is a day of protest for Internet Radio stations to get the word out on the issue. This has been talked about on /. before, but it's very nice to see a significant television/media company like TechTV use their broadcasting advantage to help the little guys, especially when they're up against monied interests." May 1 is Labor Day throughout most of the world except the U.S.; a good choice for internet radio stations to try to get out their message.

RIAA fees and Internet Radio

[dnaumov]

From what I understand, according to this bill/law/whatever, you're supposed to pay a fee o RIAA for the songs you're playing PER listener. Which makes up for a killer amount of money if you look at stations like DIGITALLY IMPORTED. What I don't understand is, are you supposed to pay a fee to RIAA, even though you're playing music from INDEPENDENT LABELS ONLY ?

I'm asking this because I've been vising the homepages of some internet radio stations that do not depend on RIAA as the "content provider" of their music, but rather play music created by indepandant artists. Yet, all of them seem to be worried about this law. Anyone cares to elaborate ?

well

[martissimo]

i could understand some sort of logical fee arrangement but they are asking internet broadcaster to pay double the rate of terrestrial based radio stations.

i would imagine if they tried to charge these fees of thoose land based stations there would be a huge fit (and many of them out of business shortly)... but since it's the internet the RIAA has to be "tough"

Not quite right

[ouija147]

From http://www.saveinternetradio.org/pressroom.asp

HISTORICAL NOTE : Over-the-air radio stations have historically had to pay royalties to composers (in total, about 3% of revenues, via ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC), but not to the record companies or artists, as Congress felt that those parties benefitted sufficiently from the promotional value of radio airplay.

They will not pay this fee. If they did then payments to the RIAA from broadcasters would total $3.3 BILLION and this is even ignoring ignoring overnight.

How is Internet Radio Different From FM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the difference between the two that would justify such a gap in the royalty fees. How can FM be seen as promotionally benificial to record companies, but Internet Radio isn't? What's the freaking difference? Are they worried about people recording the streams? Umm..have these people ever heard of tape players? Seems to me the average person would know how to tape off their stereos much easier than figuring out how to record the stream off of realplayer or winamp.

Free Market

[seven89]

The situation might benefit from a truly free-market solution. Content producers, copyright holders, etc., should be able to set whatever terms they like, which potential users, broadcasters, etc., could accept or reject. In practice, this would mean going through clearinghouse type organizations. Stations would pick the clearinghouses they wish to deal with.

The only real justification for the old system was the difficulties of detailed record-keeping in pre-computer era. Now that such fine points can be automated, there is no reason at all for governmental bodies to impose uniform fees and procedures on everyone.

By the way, I don't believe that "the free market" is a universal solution to every situation, I just think it would work well in this particular situation.

Silly idea

[artemis67]

Who's brilliant idea was it not to broadcast for a day in protest? Internet radio stations are up and down so much that no one is likely to even question why. It's not like a major TV station like CNN going offline for 24 hours. Most people are going to just move on to the next net radio station or pop in a CD.

What they SHOULD have done was to run a continuously looping 30-second spot telling everyone WHY their programming was interrupted and WHAT they wanted the listener to do.

Congrats, you just wasted a day of valuable broadcast time.

Re:How is Internet Radio Different From FM?

[Weh]

Totally agree....

Just because the d/a conversion (my soundcard) happens in my place instead of theirs (FM radio) doesn't make it any different. It's a really poor excuse for the application of the DMCA.

I think the quality of FM is even better than that of 128kb streams. If one would do an a/d on an FM stream they would have pretty much the same thing as the digital stream if not better. And I've never recorded anything of internet radio, I don't even know how to do it.

There are tons of artists and songs that I've "discovered" through internet radio wheras I hardly ever "discover" anything through FM radio because all they ever play is the same old chart shit. But I guess the RIAA et all want me to listen to and buy chart shit.

Analysis of proposed fee system

[pocketlint]

Fact: The per song per listener fee for every song an internet radio station plays is 0.14 cents.

Fact: The RIAA is seeking 3 year's retroactive payments from each broadcasting radio station.

Now let's do the math for my personal favorite internet radio station Digitally Imported [di.fm]. Currently they peak at around 6000 listeners, so let's assume an average of 5000 listeners for a 24 hour period. Given the fact that the mainly play trance/house/eurodance music let's also assume that they can play about 6 songs per hour (at the extreme end of the lengths of said tracks). The total cost to the RIAA per year to run this station follows:


total_fee = (number of listeners)(proposed fee)(songs per hour)(8760 hours per year)

total_fee = (5000 listeners)($0.0014)(6 songs)(8760) = $367,920!!!


Furthermore, take into account the retroactive payments. Assuming the station even started at 0 listeners 3 years ago and grew in a linear fashion (Gaining 1667 listeners per year) the total retroactive payments come to:

retro_fee = ($73.58)(1667) + ($73.58)(3333) + ($73.58)(5000) = $735,800!!!


As far as I know, almost all independant broadcasters cannot even afford the yearly fees, let alone this outrageous yearly fee. It's simple math that can't be argued with. When the guy who ran Digitally Imported needed donations to upgrade the server that streamed the music, he was lucky to receive $3,000 over 3 weeks.

For the love of God, at least charge a lower rate or go to a profit percentage method of payment. Most webasters that I know of have no problem with these proposals, but they have been constantly rejected by the CARP commission.

To cover these yearly costs if the stationed turned to a subscription-based system, that would require the listeners to pay $80.00 a year to listen to something that is basically being offered for free as a labor of love by the creator. Now consider that FM radio is free. That would drive more listeners to the crappy cookie-cutter top-10 wasteland that is FM brodcast radio. Whose thumb is held very prominently over this media outlet? The RIAA. Is it any wonder now why they're pushing for such high fees? Drive out the internet radio stations, drive more listeners to their crappy stations, possibly boost their revenue. It's important that we think about these issues when they arrise as the big ten of the media are basically trying to dictate to us what we should and should not be able to use to entertain ourselves. So please, speak out. Raise your voice. Be heard. [saveinternetradio.org] Thank you for listening to my thoughts on this subject.

For more information on this subject please tune into WolfFM [wolffm.com]. They are holding an excellent all-day live information broadcast on the topic at hand.