NPR Takes First Step To Fight Internet Royalties

jmcharry sent in an article that opens, "After the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decided to drastically increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels for streaming songs online, National Public Radio (NPR) will begin fighting the decision on Friday, March 16 by filing a petition for reconsideration with the CRB panel."

Why do public radio stations have to pay at all?

[snowwrestler]

It's not like they are profiting from playing the songs. They're funded with public money already, so the payments for these royalties are going straight from our tax dollars to the music labels. Congress should just exempt them from royalty payments altogether via legislation--problem solved. In fact that would be a net win for taxpayers, since we'd get the same public service at a lower cost.

$120,000 is a low ball

[Jack Action]

Internet stations that stream almost completely music are being saddled with outrageously usurious fees.

Soma FM [somafm.com] predicts their fees will rise from $20,000 today to $600,000 for 2006, and $1,000,000 in 2007.

Loosing stations like Soma would suck. I listen to a little bit of normal broadcast radio (usually just the urban hit station to pick up the occasional deserving top 20 hit), but otherwise its internet only.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[andy314159pi]

NPR has essentially stopped all investigative reporting, as far as I can tell. They mostly read press releases for about a half an hour and then repeat the process.

I actually read the ruling...

[Overzeetop]

And I was almost embarassed by the judges so clearly fellating the content industries' expert (Dr. Pelcovits) over his testimony. They took his (bought and paid for) recommendations hook, line and sinker. The only thing the content folks didn't get was a 25% premium on content sent to "wireless" users (they must be friends with Verizon), and then only because the expert didn't suggest that there was sufficient marketplace forces to determine the extent of premium that should be applied to portable devices. The judges repeatedly called bullshit on practically evey point of the webcaster's expert. Maybe they needed a better expert than this Adam Jaffe, or perhaps just someone more persuasive - say, someone with tickets to the final 4, an available hunting lodge, and a few cases of single malt.

I'm a bit surprised that there was little to no discussion concerning the relative changes in the fee structure - and that the content industry basically got every cent they asked for (except the 25%).

I don't know the players, but I'd say that there was some pretty significant bias in the panel before the parties even began to talk.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[Unnngh!]

I live by DC and have a veritable cornucopia of public radio options, I really can't complain. Some of the nationally syndicated shows are hit and miss with this sort of thing but I've recently heard some decent reporting on NPR that I haven't seen from any other broadcast outlets. It depends on the time of day and the program.

As to NPR being to the left, I think that they present a pretty balanced coverage of the news. If anything they cater to a younger audience than CNN and Fox and I think that a lot of the leftist criticism comes from not so much from a political slant but from a generational slant. The style of news and reporting that is geared towards the 45 and under crowd may seem to have a liberal bias not so much from the content but from the tone.

It's not the RIAA causing this problem....

[freshmayka]

Following the money on this one does not lead straight to the RIAA. The people who are threatened by internet radio are the traditional FM broadcasters and now Sirius and XM in the satellite radio industry.

FM is fueled by big corporate advertising dollars and payola.
Satellite radio is fueled by subscriptions.

Internet radio has a mix of the above and an abundance of free stations sponsored voluntarily by their listeners. Now close your eyes and imagine a world where every car is able to connect to internet radio. The brews big trouble for the traditional and satellite broadcasters.

Having NPR step up to this is good news indeed - while NPR is faaaar from a perfect organization this move certainly wins then some brownie points with me.

Re:Hurts when your own ox is gored, doesn't it?

[isaac]

I'm sure all the NPR execs that read this site will think twice before crossing an anonymous web post.

I'm not going to convince anyone at NPR of anything by ranting on /. - but if I raise the issue and others of like mind read about NPR's tryst with the NAB, maybe others will stop contributing to NPR stations until NPR changes their stance. Maybe some of these people will, like myself, be moved to write NPR during the semi-annual beg-a-thons to explain why they've stopped giving. Maybe, eventually, this issue will cost them more than they ever would have lost by competition from LPFM stations. I can hope, at least.

-Isaac

Re:Oops, posted to soon.

[isaac]

So what was wrong with not wanting interference all over their signal?

LPFM stations were to be held to the exact same technical standards re: interference as (IRONY ALERT) the very same low-power translator stations used by NPR affiliates to repeat their own signals. The difference is that LPFM stations were allowed to originate content, rather than simply retransmit it. I don't see how NPR could raise the interference issue in earnest. No - this was about competition for donation dollars.

-Isaac

All musicians are Public Servants?

[Nymz]

Congress should just exempt them from royalty payments altogether via legislation--problem solved. In fact that would be a net win for taxpayers, since we'd get the same public service at a lower cost.

1) Pass law declaring all musicians are Public Servants
2) Stop paying creators and workers
3) Profit!

Interesting suggestion, but I'd rather see...

1) Halt misappropriation of taxpayer monies
2) Defund government funded political propaganda
3) Freedom!

Thanks for the offer, but I can decide whom I pay for news and music, without instituting your nanny-state to run my entire life.

Re:I for one am glad

[zappepcs]

There have been no shortage of people that want to help them out. There are no shortage of companies that want to help sell their music. There are millions of people selling stuff online without the help of the MPAA or RIAA.

It has been shown with reasonable efficacy that most artists do not make money from record sales, they make it from touring mostly. Courtney Love had a great rant about that. People do want to buy music they like, but the problem is that they mostly like 'popular' music which is made popular by the 'music industry' because the control the creation and distribution of music/videos.

If that control was broken and dismantled then spread across a much larger group of people and companies, it would represent competition, and create more content, not stifle it. The Internet and digital age is here, bringing with it many opportunities. If MP3 online stores were to become focal points for electronic distribution/sales it would make the whole industry more competative. Music would be priced better, more of it would be available.

Additionally, and more to the point, Internet based radio is now what the radio broadcasting industry used to be before the RIAA members re-arranged it to suit themselves. These same Internet radio stations can front the sales/distribution of music/video media as well.

If the price of a CD was only $7.95USD there would be little point in piracy for many people. If you could get that music at reasonable prices, free of DRM, it would be a booming business without the deficit of having to line the pockets of the current big players in the music industry.

There are hundreds of ways to re-organize the music industry, but the only successful ones I can think of do not include music distributors continuing to get rich while artists do not. There are far too few artists who actually do benefit from the RIAA, despite what we are told to believe. For every artist they do support there are ten more they do not.

If that is not bad enough, the RIAA decides (more or less) what we get to listen to, which band becomes popular... in fact, they have way too much influence on the music industry. The fact that I and many other people no longer have any use for broadcast radio because of the ruination they are bringing on their own industry is the reason they need to go. They ARE ruining the future possibilities of budding artists even as we write on /.

Its time for other people to share in the control and management of the music industry. There is no evidence that the current regime is doing anything but destroying the industry for their own gain.

NPR - being destroyed from within

[hedgemage]

NPR has been on a downhill slope ever since certain parties decided to put a political appointee as its head rather than a more neutral candidate. Just as John Bolton was appointed to be the US ambasador to the UN despite his dislike of the organization, NPR's current head is doing damage in much the same way due to his own political allegiances.

Re:$120,000 is a low ball

[abshnasko]

Soma FM predicts their fees will rise from $20,000 today to $600,000 for 2006, and $1,000,000 in 2007

"Today". I do not think that word means what you think it means

Why Play at all?

[Emperor Cezar]

My question is, can a station not play the music these licenses cover? Kinda like "podsafe" music. Maybe it's time for NPR to start using Creative Commons music exclusively. If enough do it, artist will begin to release more under CC licenses.

Re:NPR going down the crapper

[daigu]

What is "left" or "right" very much depends on where you stand. The problem with comments like this one is that what gets called "left" in the United States would count as some form of "right" in most other places in the world.

Want proof? Think about the last time you turned the dial to the socialist, communist, anarchist media outlets? Oh, yeah, that's right - those outlet's don't exist in the United States. You think that happened by accident?

Further, some people have done an analysis of NPR's guest list [fair.org] that stated the following:

Elite sources dominated NPR 's guest-list. These sources--including government officials, professional experts and corporate representatives--accounted for 64 percent of all sources...Workers, students, the general public, and representatives of organized citizen and public interest groups accounted for 31 percent of all sources..organized labor were almost invisible, numbering just six sources, or 0.3 percent of the total. Corporate representatives (6 percent) appeared 23 times more often than labor representatives.

Not only is it biased toward "official sources" and "corporations", it is sexist as well:

Women were dramatically underrepresented on NPR in 1993 (19 percent of all sources), and they remain so today (21 percent). And they were even less likely to appear on NPR in stories as experts--just 15 percent of all professionals were women--or in stories discussing political issues, where only 18 percent of sources were women.

and you know what, I will get mad when NPR covers the White House and favors official sources. Why? Because their mandate was specifically to be an alternative to commercial media that would "promote personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak with many voices, many dialects." In terms of accomplishing that, it is a miserable failure.