60-Day Reprieve For Internet Royalty Rate Hike

Chickan writes "The Copyright Royalty Board has officially posted its ruling on Internet royalty rates in the Federal Register. However, the organization has pushed back the due date for royalty payments to kick in from May 15 to July 15. The publication of this information also begins the official 30-day period for appeals. NPR is slated to file an appeal in this timeframe."

The Rich get richer...

[Mockylock]

If the appeal doesn't take hold, all the little guys will be forced out and the majority of stations will play NOT ONLY tons of advertisements, but also only popular music that brings mainstream listeners.

If they base it on PROFIT gained by advertisements, rather than per song, per user... it will GREATLY improve the chances of smaller bands to be recognized. The only people benefitting are those grabbing the cash, and the already popular musicians and stations... the little guy will get pushed out.

The majority of stations online aren't even making a lot of money, rather than entertaining a specific genre of music.

Please, write your senators.

You know what I'd like to see...

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Can't Internet radio stations just simply refuse to play RIAA music then? This would be great. We'd get stations full of independent artists and labels. I want to see billboard music disappear with what they're doing. They're trying to cripple and control the Internet instead of working with it. They need to learn that this will only lead to their downfall.

Everything old is new again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Local DJ-driven radio is all but dead at this point anyway. The idea of using radio to actually engage listeners, as opposed to playing a rather fixed set list of "hits", is something most stations have given up on. Up here, the Detroit NPR affiliate, WDET, went so far as to eliminate most of its music programming (including the phenomenal Alternate Take, hosted by Liz Copeland, and some legendary jazz shows that have been staples for that community) in favor of becoming a clone of another NPR affiliate that we already receive in the same area.

Radio and the larger music labels have given up their role as taste-makers in lieu of pandering to more conservative audience taste. A local DJ can afford to challenge you. A large multi-station enterprise has little choice but to play it safe. Even the satellite radio stations have woefully "safe" playlists, for all the chatter about endless choice.

I dare say most people reading slashdot gave up on the idea of finding new music on the radio a while ago - and the rest of the public is only half a step behind. The unfortunate consequence will be the larger record labels and the multi-station radio networks are going to fight technology tooth and nail for a fight they already gave up on twenty years ago.

Payola used to be a scandal. Now it's merely a business model.

An alternate solution?

[Rob T Firefly]

Maybe I'm nutty, but would it be possible for an Internet broadcaster to switch to some sort of submission-based format? In that way, artists can submit their own work to the station. Through this process they'd not only hook their submissions to the info on where to send the royalty check (bypassing the RIAA/Soundexchange scam) but also agree to some actually sane royalty rate, terms-of-service style. On an Internet where MySpace, MP3.com, and the like are full of people who are already putting tracks out there for free, where countless bands with their own actual websites are paying hosting fees out of their pockets to put their free downloads out there, and where most of these people would love the chance to get themselves heard on popular Internet radio stations, it seems to me a broadcaster could build up a respectable playlist in this manner.

Re:Voice your unhappiness!

[acherusia]

Damnit. I'm forfeiting mod points to respond, but you hit a major pet peeve of mine there.

You do not get to define the terms of a debate. You do not get to say "If you do not take a particular action that I like you to take, you have lost the ability to debate this without being a flaming hypocrite." You can also lay off the self-aggrandizing holier-than-thou soapboxing, but I don't really care about that.

  I'm probably not going to contact my representative on this issue. I may, because I think this is as much bullshit as everyone else, but frankly I have so much shit going on in my life right now that I just have absolutely no desire to do so. On the other hand, I decided years ago that I wouldn't give the RIAA or the MPAA a single cent, nor would I give them mindshare by pirating. I'm not going to say I've never broken that, but only twice. (It helps that I prefer books and videogames to music and movies.) And you're saying that if I don't take a single action you think I should take I lose the right to bitch about the RIAA? Um. No.

Personally, I'm also not convinced that patents and copywrites are entirely vital to creativity, but that's another debate entirely.

Why should I lobby in favor of the RIAA's clients?

[jbn-o]

The corporate studios don't sign that many artists and (according to a Chicago Tribune article I read some years ago) a lot of the artists they sign are indebted to the label for many albums. So long before the listener gets any chance to hear the artist, the label has them under their thumb. The RIAA's legal antics against listeners (often bringing cases before researching evidence against them) is covered here on /.. I'm left to wonder why I should write anyone in support of making it easier to help these labels by making it more likely that their music will be played.

I'm left to think that we should let them raise the rates as high as they think the market will bear. I'd rather work with artists who license their recordings to me so that I may non-commercially share them verbatim with others in any medium. I stopped listening to radio (online and over the air) because what I was hearing is only the "popular music that brings mainstream listeners" (in other words, as far as I can hear that's what they're playing now before any new fee schedule). This is not what I want to hear. Often the online stations I heard were merely retransmissions of what was being played over the air.

Contrary to what FreePress.net is claiming in their emails, I don't believe this means the end of Internet radio. I think it means the end of RIAA tracks on Internet radio and it opens the way for unsigned artists and tracks from labels that don't screw the artist (like Magnatune).