Internet Radio's "Last Stand" 316
We've been discussing the plight of Internet radio for some time, as the Copyright Royalty Board imposed royalties that industry observers predicted would prove lethal to the nascent industry. We discussed Web radio's day of silence in protest, which won the industry a reprieve, and the futile efforts to find relief in Congress. Now it's looking as if the last act is indeed close. Death Metal Maniac sends along this Washington Post story with extensive quotes from Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, who said: "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money... We're funded by venture capital. They're not going to chase a company whose business model has been broken." The article estimates that XM Satellite Radio will pay "about 1.6 cents per hour per listener when the new rates are fully adapted in 2010. By contrast, Web radio outlets will pay 2.91 cents per hour per listener." That's 70% of projected revenue for Pandora; smaller players estimate the hit at 100% to 300% of revenue.
Re:What it comes down to is GREED! (Score:5, Informative)
Obvious solution -- broadcast from Venezuela. Chavez probably won't give a rip about the RIAA.
Even satellite radio can't survive at their rates! (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that Internet radio's rates are almost TWICE as high as satellite's. The only thing I can come up with is that SoundExchange WANTS to put Internet radio out of business for some reason-that's the reason they're setting rates as high as they are!
A small correction (Score:5, Informative)
*US based* internet radio's last stand...
Don't forget... In the free world US laws do not apply...
Re:Royalty Pricing (Score:5, Informative)
You're confusing profit with revenue.
Profit is what is left over after you pay for servers and bandwidth and salaries and everything else.
Revenue is what you take in before you've payed for all of that.
The fees are hitting 70% of the REVENUE.
Re:A small correction (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More arbitrary fees (Score:4, Informative)
disclaimer: i have inside connections with the bigwigs of major music labels. i despise their business model but they are good people. therefore my information below comes from their mouths
you are incorrect. any music soundexchange collects royalties for is subject to fees. an artist has to register to soundexchange in order to collect royalties. its pretty open and shut. except for this little tidbit: if you are an indy artist and a jukebox plays your music in a bar but your music is free.. soundexchange is collecting money on your behalf. your only option to ensure your music is free is to enforce your copyright and tell the bar to remove your music from the soundexchange-tethered jukebox. downside of that is your music won't be heard unless you can somehow convince the bar owner to replace the jukebox with a jukebox that allows free music to be played on it (but this creates a huge liability for the owner. see the problem?)
similar things happen with the radio, except you have to negotiate your own royalty deal with radio stations. generally they won't play music unless the general public knows who you are. the big 4 can throw money at billboards to garner interest and then pressure the radio station into playing them.
artists need to break away from the big 4. the original mp3.com was perfect for this... then they sold out and that, my friends, killed the internet radio star.
Re:A small correction (Score:4, Informative)
The caveat about Deezer is that it's a European operation. Deezer and other European sites offering similar services are allocating money for royalties while the European versions of SoundExchange figure out just how in the hell things are going to work.
If the royalty rates come in as expected, then great -- Deezer and their ilk will be going strong. But if European royalty negotiations go the way they have here in the US, Deezer might be the next to go.
Re:Pirate Radio?? (Score:5, Informative)
Trouble is...they way things stand as I understand it...even if you play ONLY indie, free music, you are still subject to SoundExchanges fees. I think they collect even for people not registered to them....the laws passed were pretty sweeping if I recall from older Slashdot discussions on this.
So, to get by even that...I was thinking of some kind of Pirate Network Radio thing on a P2P or Freenet type network.
Re:The Dark Side of the Greed. (Score:5, Informative)
Some greed masters like Masters Jobs and Wozniak break into a field of greed.
That's not entire fair to Woz [wikipedia.org]. Jobs may have broken in, but Woz more or less stumbled in, and then reduced his role after a plane crash. He still has associations with Apple, but he's no "greed master" like Jobs or Gates. He's the sort who upon getting rich realizes he doesn't need to keep on with his day job, and moves on to more interesting things.
Re:What it comes down to is GREED! (Score:2, Informative)
The one thing I would add though is that when SoundExchange/whatever giant corp decides to push internet radio, they're just going to turn into an internet Clear Channel so all you get the same song over and over and over and lots and lots of ads.
Re:What it comes down to is GREED! (Score:1, Informative)
The record companies don't want the revenue from internet radio, they want it gone. Internet radio allows easy discovery of music, something that the record industry has a pretty solid monopoly on currently. If they give up that monopoly, they risk becoming obsolete and actually having to work for their bread.
The problem is it makes it easy to discover the WRONG kind of music. Internet radio makes finding non-RIAA artists easy and painless. The RIAA wants you discovering new music. They want to make sure any new music you discover stays in the RIAA fold though.
Re:Pirate Radio?? (Score:3, Informative)
You forgot Dance Industries [dance-industries.com] and Jamendo [jamendo.com].
It looks like they've already gotten started (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The day the music died (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure what makes them think this is a good business choice.
For control of what you hear. This will also keep you from listening to independent music. It maintains their gatekeeper status. That's what it's all about.
don't worry about it (Score:1, Informative)
No, just music, you are cool to go on talk radio all you want. I was going to do that myself but I can't get anything but dialup where I am at right now. Man does that suck. All the other things make this is a good place to be for me now, so I am not going to move just to get broadband. I am hoping it might be WiMax to the rescue *someday*. With my flying car.
Re:The day the music died (Score:5, Informative)
Screw pandora! the internet is worldwide, they should move to terrestrial boardcast if they are going to get picky about geography.
Licensing constraints are pretty clearly not their fault. Blame the RIAA.
Re:What are they thinking? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The day the music died (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pirate Radio?? (Score:1, Informative)
That's correct. It's called a "compulsory license", in the sense that it's compulsory on the part of the publishers; they have to accept those terms if someone chooses to license work from them that way. This prevents the RIAA and what not from setting their own license rates prohibitively high for others to use. And of course, if you do this, there needs to be some sort of centralized auditing and collection firm, like SoundExchange. This really is nothing new. What is new is that the RIAA is using SoundExchange as a front to raise rates and shut down a distribution channel, which really turns on the idea of a compulsory "screw the label" license on its head.
All that said, nothing stops you from setting up your own licensing arrangements with the copyright holders. Creative Commons music would be plenty legal to play without payment to these jokers.