Day of Silence On the Internet 276
A number of readers sent in stories about Net radio going dark for a day. Not all of it, but according to the Globe and Mail at least 45 stations representing thousands of channels. The stations are protesting a ruling establishing royalty rates that will put most of them out of business on July 15. "The ruling... is expected to cost large webcasters such as Yahoo and Real Networks millions of dollars, drive smaller websites like Pandora.com and Live365.com out of business and leave a large chunk of the 72 million Net radio listeners in the dark." SaveNetRadio has a page where US residents can locate their senators and representatives to call them today.
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
The Copyright Royalties Board recently (March 2, 2007) enacted new regulations which increase the "royalties" owed by internet broadcasters; instead of paying
From what I understand, the "per song streamed" is calculated not by just how many songs you broadcast, but also how many listeners you had for each particular song. So if 10 people listened to a 30 Seconds From Mars track, it would count as 10 songs, not 1.
Who gets the money? SoundExchange. Under such protest, the generously offered webcasters the gracious offer of being able to pay the reduced rates for a little longer than originally scheduled. How nice of them!
Basically it boils down to the fact that terrestrial broadcasters pay no royalties whatsoever to the recording companies, but the recording industry wants to extort as much money as they can from the internet music business. Which, in turn, will most likely drive most internet radio out of the game.
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
Instead, the Internet Radio Equality Act [wikipedia.org] proposes a lower royalty fee (0.33 cents per hour per listener) or a revenue sharing agreement.
Re:No effect (Score:4, Informative)
Then how come I get the following message if I try to listen to any stream?
" LAUNCHcast Is Off the Air - It's a Day of Silence
LAUNCHcast Radio and other webcasters are silent today, from
12 midnight EST to 11:59 pm EST. A recent COPYRIGHT ROYALTY decision will impose punishing fees that could shut down most online radio.
You can do something about it. Go to www.savenetradio.org to find out more, and call your congressional representative before JULY 15th.
Today is only one day of silence -- but if you don't speak up, this could be the only sound we'll hear from online radio. "
Looks like involvement to me...
Re:Play independent music (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Non-American listeners? (Score:2, Informative)
To start the ball rolling...
www.planetrock.com (UK) Playing some Genesis as I write this. (June is Genesis Month)
www.bbc.co.uk/radio and select your station
If the USA conglomerates are so determined to cut their own throat then so be it. These companies do need to understand that the internet allows us to listen to broadcasters from all over the world. Shutting down US based stations just means more audience for broadcasters in other possibly more enlightened countries.
I'm sad because I do sometimes tune into a few Bay Area Stations. Probably for not much longer.
Re:Play independent music (Score:2, Informative)
Re:One day? (Score:2, Informative)
Here's the short, short version AFAICT (Score:5, Informative)
In the beginning. Prior to 1995, you could 'perform' music in public, via digital broadcasting, without paying any royalties on it. I'm a little fuzzy on exactly what you used to have to pay royalties for (Wikipedia says there was "no performance right" for artists, but that doesn't make a lot of sense, I remember performance-rights cases prior to '95; I think it was just a digital thing), but anyway, in 1995 Congress passed a law granting rightsholders control over the digital 'performance' of their works. The upshot of this was that anyone distributing music digitally now had to pay 'performance' royalties for it.
Obviously, trying to pay royalties directly to the owner of each piece of music that you might play on a radio station would be problematic. It would require negotiating a license with each rightsholder, for each work, for every station. The paperwork and negotiations would be crippling. So a provision was made for so-called 'statutory licenses,' basically blanket licenses that you buy from an organization who takes the proceeds and divides them up among artists. (Blanket broadcast licenses like this aren't a new thing, but this extended them to digital broadcasting.) In return, you can play whatever you want, without worrying about negotiating individual contracts. The cost and rate structure of these licenses is set, theoretically, by the U.S. Copyright Office.
Enter SoundExchange. The RIAA [1] has a division/subsidiary/department-of-evil called "SoundExchange", which is designated, by the U.S. Copyright Office, as the sole supplier of "statutory licenses" for digital music. So if you wanted to run an internet radio station or other digital broadcast, and weren't going to stick to just playing independent artists who have relinquished some of their rights to public performance, you needed to go to SoundExchange and buy a license. While philosophically objectionable to many (including many artists!) because of the metrics they use to distribute the fees, SoundExchange had licensing terms that weren't horrific, including some that were based on a percentage-of-revenue (I've heard 10-13% quoted). So if you were running a small-time internet radio station, the fees wouldn't break the bank. This has been the status quo for a while now.
The Rubber Stamp. The current controversy started a while back, when SoundExchange proposed, and the Copyright Office approved, a dramatic rate hike. Among other things, the new rates eliminated the percent-of-revenue model, replacing it instead with a per-song-per-listener model, combined with a minimum per-channel fee, and a bunch of other onerous terms (including making the fees retroactive to some point in the past, which would instantly force any station without large cash reserves out of existence). The bottom line was that under the new fees, most small internet radio stations -- particularly those who have lots of channels tailored to particular musical tastes or genres -- just wouldn't be able to pay the bills. The effect as far as I can tell, would be to make Internet radio much like terrestrial broadcast radio: dominated by a few corporate-backed players (e.g., Last.fm), with a small number of channels playing basically the same thing. The new rates, if nothing happens to forestall them, go into effect around the middle of next month.
[1] Okay, allegedly it's "independent" now. Riiight...
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
So much so that there have been many, many "payola" scandals, including in the past year, where the broadcasters are paid kickbacks (through tickets, cash, gifts) to play particular songs and artists.
The fact that this system would probably work out for the music industry when it comes to internet music is being ignored -- as has long been noted here on slashdot.
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:3, Informative)
The basic reasoning behind this is that it is a mutually beneficial situation where airplay increases record sales for the label and tour attendance for the artists.
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:3, Informative)
Running a net station means reaching fewer people and paying more per listener.
Having more net stations helps ensure a roughly equivalent user base to terrestrial.
I like the "hard to apply payola" theory.
They probably just want less choices on the internet.
I'm sure getting royalties that they don't deserve:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/24/141326/87
doesn't hurt either.
Re:Play independent music (Score:5, Informative)
It's called a compulsory license, and it's a pretty well-understood legal structure. Interestingly, this is what makes allofmp3.com legal in Russia. The terms are just different.
The goal is to make it easier for broadcasters to secure rights to the material they're broadcasting, as they can choose to make use of the compulsory license, rather than negotiating a deal with each artist individually. This is, of course, assuming the fees are fair. And note, this doesn't preclude broadcasters from securing rights from the artists themselves... it's just a pain in the ass.
If they are collecting money for bands that aren't even affiliated with them, then they aren't giving these bands any money either, so basically they are just taking money
a) The bands are "affiliated" with them because the government chose SoundExchange as the arbiter of the royalties. Complain to the CRB if you don't like that.
b) The bands are free to secure their royalties from SoundExchange at any point. The CRB website has links to the necessary forms, IIRC.
However, if I sing "jingle bells" on air, will they now require that I pay them?
If the song is under valid copyright, yes, unless you've secured rights from the copyright holder directly.
What about the opening musical jingle to my radio talk show?
Presumably you've already secured rights.
What about if I'm a band and I let my fans stream my songs from my website for free?
Well, you own the copyright in that case, don't you? So you're free to do what you wish with the material.
In the end, compulsory licensing, as a concept is a very very good idea. Assuming reasonable royalties, it reduces overall costs for broadcasters, since they only end up dealing with a single entity.
The problem comes in when the CRB and SoundExchange agree to modify the rates in a fashion which is clearly discriminatory. In this case, it seems pretty clear that SE is acting in the interests of the entrenched music oligopoly. And the CRB has apparently chosen to kowtow to those same interests.
Congress People (Mine? Hrmph) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
That's the payoff that comes from being able to afford lobbying. This money, which isn't yours, gets channeled to you and unless someone pays a fee to you to be able to collect their money from you, you get to keep it. Win win! You can finance more lobbying, off of the backs of people who may disagree with your entire viewpoint, hence one possible reason why they're indy.
Gotta love how it all works, huh?
Re: Ex-post facto (Score:3, Informative)
From the Cornell Law School Wex:
Ex post facto
Latin for "from a thing done afterward." Ex post facto is most typically used to refer to a law that applies retroactively, thereby criminalizing conduct that was legal when originally performed. Two clauses in the US Constitution prohibit ex post facto laws: Art 1, 9 [cornell.edu] and Art. 1 10 [cornell.edu]. see, e.g. Collins v. Youngblood, 497 US 37 (1990) and California Dep't of Corrections v. Morales, 514 US 499 (1995).
The distinction between civil and criminal in ex post facto cases was made in Calder v.Bull, 1798.
You can argue The Case Against Civil Ex Post Facto Laws [cato.org], but the Supreme Court is not in the habit of overturning 200 years of settled law.
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How about a day of EXPLANATION?!?! (Score:2, Informative)