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Music Media

RIAA and Royalties From Webcasters 129

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hey-look-a-new-revenue-stream dept.
kootch sent us a story explaining something I didn't know about. Radio broadcasters pay a royalty to the composer & publisher to play a song. The record company doesn't get anything. But under the terms of the DMCA, the recording industry is trying to collect royalties from webcasters who are streaming audio.
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RIAA and Royalties From Webcasters More

RIAA and Royalties From Webcasters

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  • So, if you are already paying royalties, I assume there is a regular ASCAP/BMI mechanism for collecting and dsitributing these royalties -- one that is applicable to web broadcasting.

    So why should RIAA want to, or be allowed to, insert themselves into this picture? Are you relatively unique in paying royalties? Even if you are, why is another collection/distribution system needed?

    The aspect of the article that struck me wsa that RIAA is trying to differentiate webcasting from traditiional broadcasting. I just don't see why that is valid.

  • "Our agreement with Yahoo confirms that music on the Internet will thrive when parties work together," said Hilary Rosen, president and chief executive officer of the RIAA

    What this means is that Any agreement which involves RIAA would succeed, because they could use their clout to bludgeon through any opposition from both Artists and public.

    This sickens me and anyone out there, something goes wrong in any industry and the Govt steps in to mend the ways, or so it says. M$ Trial is one, RIAA and MPAA are other two stories. Now now.. Microsoft probably deserved most of it, but its setting a dangerous trend. Inviting the Govt to tend to squabbles, which then uses mass media to brainwash people behind it, spread dogma and try to instill wrong notions amidst the public about whats right and wrong.

    RIAA wants to become the Iron Curtain behind which Big Arm Record companies could flourish, just like what Firms used to do by paying a cut to the Mafia. Theres no difference here, only here the Govt is doing it. The beaureacrats would try to control technology because they dont understand it, and they fear anything that they dont comprehend.

    I could be wrong, but then there are others who think the same.
  • And the major labels
    Yup UhHUH
    They are only looking after my best intrests after all. and ANOTHER 300 boys bands all singing the same souless crap is in my best intrests.

    And it is not like Record Execs have a bad rep in the morality department.

    Right....

    Right....

    please tell me I am right.......
  • I'm a musician and a music industry major and have been following this for a long time. I do feel that the RIAA is corrupt and has stolen more from artist than the Internet ever will. However following the basic buisness model for the Industry, the broadcast companies should contect the artist about the music they want to play. I think most "pirate broadcasters" would want to play more obscure songs. This means these small artist probably aren't affiliated w/ RIAA and would happily bypass royalties for air time. also a blanket license can be negotiated with record companies and can still be fairly inexpensive if the station is nonprofit. the main problem I see is software programmers and admins that know nothing about the industry are venturing into untravelled territory with music without signifigant knowledge of the law. It's understandable, however it would be wise to find a consultant who knows the industry to prevent these problems. Would you start a Mail order food sevice on the Internet without adhearing to health code regulations, would you want to purchase from a company that didn't? It's the same thing. Would you want a company profitting off of your hard work without making money yourself? I think it's important to keep a perspective on this and not just cry freespeech all the time. true most of what the RIAA does is rediculous and they should rot in hell, but I have to agree with this one
  • let me get this straight. as long as i pay ASCAO $100 per year and broadcast on the internet i can download all the music i wish? Th ecost of 5 CDs? what is to stop me from setting up a station with me as the only listener? have a huge MP3 archive on a playlist, or control the Dj work from wherever i am at. i think i would be stuip NOT to do this....
  • Hey, I'm at work, asshole!

    Probly just got me fired...bastard...

  • They do, when you purchase the cd, it's called a mechanical royaltie and the artist should get 75%, however it doesn't always work this way. When you by sheet music the money is considered a performance royaltie so you can perform it. radio stations use a blanket license usually and pay for the company's whole catalogue colleges pay performance royalties at a discount and have to keep a program for every recital and performance. ASCAP audits them yearly and ajusts cost according to the # of performances. basically cd's aren't the only way musicians make money. is it fair? ask most professional musicians they will probably agree with most of it.
  • i'm on crack... royalty... :) not royaltie hehe
  • This is really starting to sound like Farenheit 451 or something. The next step is to make it illegal for a guy like me to sit around his house and play copyrighted music on his guitar. Imagine a van full of guys wearing suits and sunglasses pulling into your driveway, breaking down the front door, crashing into your room, ripping the guitar out of your hands, and dragging you off to prison.

    After time it will become illegal to _think_ of copyrighted music without paying a fee. Imagine getting fined for having your favourite song stuck in your head!

  • You have reached the legal capacity of my limited brain. Sorry, can't answer that one.

    Opinion wise, I would say that it would be legal since the only part that you are copying is the public domain stuff. If you scan the sheet music into an image file then it would be illegal though.

  • Streaming MP3 can be done using Open Source Software.

    How did you know about open source? I thought you had a closed mind.

    Gnumeric is an Open Source (GPL'd) spreadsheet program. Just because the first spreadsheet program (VisiCalc, you wouldn't recall it. It ran on the Apple II) was closed source and commercial software doesn't mean that the Open Source community isn't going to produce an Open Source implementation of the same functionality.
  • Radio broadcasters pay a royalty to the composer & publisher to play a song. The record company doesn't get anything.

    Jumping Jesus on a Pogo stick....who do you think the publisher is?? 90% of the time it's the record company that signed the artist.

    More to the point, however, the really fat money comes not from radio broadcasts, but from record sales.

    The Tyrrany Begins.... [fearbush.com]

  • In Germany and Austria about 90 % of all "folk music" (they call it so, but it actually isn't) is written by one woman. So she gets all the royalties. Though not well known, she's one of the richest women in Austria...

  • Re:Not always (Score:3)

    by Kierthos ( 225954 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:22AM (#728700) Homepage
    Not really. Radio stations can use a variety of methods to get around this. There is, AFAIK, no standard contract for a radio station to play a certain song.

    And there are many ways that a radio station can play a song more often then others without paying more money for it (i.e. the publishers are not asking for money or even paying the station):

    1) Play a few songs, including the one you want to play often, and ask listeners to call in to vote on the one they like best. Play the ones they liked best again later. If this doesn't result in playing that song again, skew the results so it does.

    2) Have each DJ play it at least once during their shift. You'll get the song played 4-6 times a day this way.

    3) Hold a promotional event around the album the song is on. The publishers of the album will help with this, more often then not. Give away free albums, posters, concert tickets to listeners who call in when the song is played. Do this all week long. You can play the song more often then normally because people are winning something.

    See how this can be done?

    Now, here's the problems that the publishers have with web-broadcasting:

    1) You never know who's playing your songs. Publishers love looking at station demographics as this affects their marketing strategy.

    2) You never know how they got your song. Did they download it illegally? Get a dupe from a friend?

    3) Song quality. Radio stations tend to get new copies of CDs if the old ones get messed up. Web-casters rarely have enough money to replace damaged music. Song quality does affect how the song is received by listeners. If it's really grainy or scratchy, then what incentive does someone who doesn't own the album have to go buy it?

    4) Royalties. Let's face it. People are greedy. Not just song publishers, kids. Also, when recording from a radio broadcast, you're likely to get a bad recording. If recording from a web-cast, you can (not will, can) get much better quality for your own home recordings. Publishers hate the thought of anyone owning the album without paying for it.

    Just some points...

    Kierthos
  • My upstairs neighbor can't keep his music turned down. The mind numbing sounds of Dr. Dre and Eminem pump through our place and to others in the immediate area because they keep their windows open. I wonder if they're paying for the rights to publicly broadcast that sh*t?

    Maybe I ought to get the RIAA's lawyer's on them? If it backfires and the music is offered free in exchange for more playing time, I'll sue the RIAA for promoting a public nuisence(sp?)

    - Signed,
    Man with broom handle holes in ceiling

  • So what if someone is deaf in one ear. Will they get a discount for not being able to listen in stereo?
  • This has been moderated as funny, and rightfully so. However, in the Netherlands you pay a certain percentage extra when buying any form of blank media, which means they are automatically assuming it is going to be used to illegally copy something. In other words, we are paying to listen at home...
  • ...I am streaming audio that the RIAA has no control over? Example: I once had set up a small Commodore 64 SID Shoutcast to stream SID music over the Internet. Does this mean that the RIAA would try to charge me to do this? How can they have the right? I used the High Voltage SID Collection [c64.org], which currently contains well over 10,000 tunes. Many of these tunes are independently authored and released. The RIAA surely can't have any right to take money for this?
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
  • I remembered seeing an earlier article on this topic... Link here [slashdot.org]

    I thought the broadcasting setteled their suit out of court. I guess you can't get anything past the RIAA these days. I guess cool sites like I-wrif [iwrif.com] here in Detroit are going to be taken down. I don't see any reason radio stations should pay the RIAA because they're playing songs that are the properity of the RIAA. Has anyone else mentioned to them that the songs their industry produces are the properity of the artist and NOT the industry. They don't mention that part to us do they?

    Next thing we'll be hearing is the RIAA suit against the Radio Broadcast Industry because people are using radio's to pirate songs. (wait a second...) But hey at least I won't be sued by Metallica. Good luck getting me kicked off of a radio station guys.

  • I hear the RIAA'll start trying to collect royalties from deceased composers themselves soon. They're still having trouble with the old problem of squeezing blood from a turnip, though.
  • kootch is gay

  • Not always (Score:4)

    by Fervent ( 178271 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:00AM (#728708)
    Some publishers and artists forgo accepting payment for more airtime. Instead of being paid as much, they ask to be played more often and accept less money.

    It's sort of like having the radio station pay the the publisher to use the music, then the publisher paying back the radio station to be rotated and played more on the playlist.

    In some cases this goes to an even higher extreme, with the publisher not accepting pay at all (the radio station gets the music for free, but must play it often) or even the publisher paying the radio station (where they then have to play it very often).

    I know that is how the major station here in New York, K-Rock, does it.

  • Are we not talking payola here, I thought that was Illegal

  • I participate in a small webcast that specializes in smaller gothic/industrial bands. There is no profit being made, just having some fun and playing some good indie music. The fearless leader/owner of the "station" has received a couple of letters from those disgusting leeches ASCAP/BMI. The solution?

    Stop playing ASCAP/BMI music (not that there was much, if any, of it being played to begin with). The soulless corporate bands get enough airtime as it is. He receives hundreds of submissions from smaller artists - if he receives another bitch letter, he will start requiring those artists to sign releases to play their songs without royalties. No ASCAP/BMI music, no outrageous licensing fee, no problem!
  • If the webcaster is operating in a radio-style format, then the royalties should be paid to ASCAP/BMI as they are by a radio station. By radio-style I mean the content is decided on the server-side, as opposed to a juke-box style, where the client determines the content.

  • During my college days, I was (one of) the station managers for our college radio station. We were a officially designated "non-commercial" radio station for our FCC broadcast license, and thus did not have to pay ANY sort of compensation, royalties, or ASCAP fees. I wonder if thats still true...

  • The reason is that these deals are each worked out individually. But, it's not the playing of the music, per se, that is subject to royalties. It is only because the station is a commercial venture and is rebroadcasting the music specifically for public consumption.

    I.e., it is not illegal for you to go down to the corner with a guitar and play and sing some song that someone else wrote. Even though we may think of that as "public performance", it doesn't fall under that category.
    OTOH, if you recorded yourself playing that song and starting selling tapes of it, that would be subject to royalties. (to the composer, not the artist).

    A gray area is performing for free in public without charging, yet using amplification equipment. In general, no one pursues royalties for such a thing. So, unless someone knows of a case, it's never really been decided if something like that is illegal.
  • payola is illegal, but there's other ways around it, i'm sure.

    something like "we'll sponsor this cool promotional contest for your radio station" but only if "you play this song a lot" where everything not in quotes is a verbal agreement.

    does anybody even remotely trust the major labels anymore?
  • Radio broadcasters pay a royalty to the composer & publisher to play a song. Actually, they don't. In order to broadcast, period, all you need to do is pay a flat-fee to our friends over at ASCAP. Then your free of all this cr*p. slmcav
  • Which is kinda sad if you stop to think about it

  • This would make perfect sense -- copyright holders generally sign up with ASCAP/BMI to manage their royalties. (Although, I suspect the RIAA would really like to move to a licensing model.)

    #include i_am_not_a_lawyer.h

    The DMCA (specifically Title IV, Sec. 405) requires that webcasters (and specifically webcasters) pay licensing fees directly to the record company. It refers to the copyright holder of the sound recording, not the copyright of the song or the performance (three different things under copyright here).

    However, what I read in this, the notion of a "webcast" is a broadcast, either on a subscription or non-subscription basis. Therefore, this restriction may not apply to client-selected streaming media. But, there's layer after layer of exceptions and qualifications that I can't make head nor tail of.

    (Gawd help us if Legislators start writing tech specs!)

    The full text can be found here [eff.org] if you're really interested in wading through it. It's much easier to get to than the loc.gov links.

  • The loophole is you have to announce that it is a 'paid broadcast'...Limp Bizkit did it back when they were clamoring for sales...hehe they suck.

  • I don't want anybody sticking anything in my pockets...

    ...This is exactly why so many geeks fail to produce offspring.

    (This has been my one lame attempt at humour for the day.)
  • Is this the specific clause that they're refering to? Just trying to read it carefully to make sure this isn't newspersons' FUD.

    17 USC 112(e)(1)(D) [cornell.edu]

    • Notwithstanding any provision of the antitrust laws, any copyright owners of sound recordings and any transmitting organizations entitled to a statutory license under this subsection may negotiate and agree upon royalty rates and license terms and conditions for making phonorecords of such sound recordings under this section and the proportionate division of fees paid among copyright owners, and may designate common agents to negotiate, agree to, pay, or receive such royalty payments.

    If so, what's wrong with such a clause? And why the mention of antitrust laws?
    --

  • In almost all recording contracts today, the record company IS the publisher. The recording industry strips the publishing rights from the artist almost 100% of the time...
  • Interestingly enough, it seems that the RIAA has some claim to royalties, though a weak one. This comes from the ASCAP [ascap.com] FAQ [ascap.com] on webcasting:

    The ASCAP license does not authorize the reproduction or distribution of music or sound recordings. To obtain these rights you should contact the Harry Fox Agency, Inc.(the wholly-owned licensing subsidiary of the National Music Publishers' Association, Inc.) for authorization to copy and distribute the music, and the copyright owner of the sound recording (usually the record label) for authorization to copy and distribute sound recordings. Information on these important rights may be obtained from the Harry Fox Agency, and the RIAA, the record labels' trade association.

    snip

    The copying of a copyrighted musical work or sound recording onto your server (as when you load the file containing the work), constitutes exploitation of the reproduction right, for which authorization is required. Again, you should contact the Harry Fox Agency, Inc. for authorization to copy the music onto your server, and the copyright owner of the sound recording (usually the record label), for authorization to copy the sound recording onto your sever.

  • They will also be charging us more based on how much we enjoyed the music.

    Wait, that would actually be good, since we wouldn't have to pay for the 8 or so songs that suck on so many albums.

    Never mind. The RIAA wouldn't do that even if they could.

  • ummm, no.

    take a peek at the back of whatever CD you can find. then look at the info published inside. they lyrics will be published with permission from "Devil in My Gig Bag Music" (that's for the band Caviar.) the company in quotes is registered by the band with ASCAP, not the label. the bands own their own lyrics.

    as for my example - Caviar are friends of mine and yes, they own their lyrics.

  • Pay royalties to the artists, not the RIAA.
    ----
  • Webcaster on the other hand have a very low entrance fee, but the cost of broadcasting raises as the listener base increases. For instance I have a 768K DSL line, and I am streaming out a 128Kbps stream. Now each listener will suck approx 14K/sec of bandwidth (once you add TCP header etc..). so that means that means that I can support a total of about 50-52 listeners before my connection maxes out. My DSL connection cost me $140 a month. That means I spent roughhly $2.69 per listener, per month.

    Who taught you math? You can support 6 listeners with no TCP or UDP overhead and assuming you have SDSL. 5 will max you out completely well with ADSL. You got KB and Kb mixed up. Plus you divided 128 by 10 not 8. A 14KB/s stream is only good for 96Kbps MP3. If you really have a 7 MEGABIT DSL line for $140 please put me in touch with your provider!

    Ok that is over a quarter-million dollars a month, so why dont you tell me how traditional media has a higher profit/listener ratio?

    I didn't. I said Internet radio has a higher profit per listener. It has to.

    There are also better ways to scale to multiple users than your linear model using MBONE and multicast routing. But yes, it's still more expensive.

    ~GoRK
  • Yes. You could; but they probably wouldn't let you.

    You would have to first, start a business to do this. Secondly, you would have to report your playlists to ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI. Thirdly, you would have to send them your company's financials along with the coming year's budget and plans for growth. Lastly, you have to make sure that the music you are "broadcasting" is licensed under ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. Things like bootlegs, concert recordings, etc. are not, and they will nail you for "broadcasting" that kind of stuff if you're not licensed for it. Lastly, you would actually have to make it available as a public broadcast as per the terms of your contracts with the licensors.

    All in all, trying to do somehting like this would be pretty cool, but it would probably get you into a legal mess that you wouldn't want to be in.

    ~GoRK
  • MP3s are measured in kilobits. Converting 128kbps to bytes gives 16K/s. Your DSL is also measured in kilobits (unless you're saying that you get 6mbps DSL for $140/month), so you can only support 5 or 6 people (768/128=6), and then they'll all start losing packets.
  • Not only in the Netherlands. Even in Canadia, we're taxed^H^H^H^H^Hcharged a levy on blank audio(and data) media. Info here [sycorp.com].
  • I wish there was a stricter law on DJs who find it necessary to talk over beginnings of songs. Or in worse cases on Friday and Saturday nights, holding telephone conversations with dumb listeners before the vocals kick in. Hey now, the beginning 20 seconds of a song is part of the song too, so why do the DJs have to trample over it? And yes, we know what station we are listening to, so we don't need to be reminded on every song.

    I miss Rev 105. They woulnd't do that shit(okay, maybe they did, it's been a while)
  • Most of the CDs I own have songs published by the artist's own publishing company. Although I'm mostly talking about more established musicans who write their own songs (Lou Reed, David Bowie). I don't know what's the norm for pop artists of the moment (Britney Spears, etc.)

  • I don't know about you, but I have been in radio (though non-commercial). The music is free, you don't go out and buy it. You know when the labels bitch about their promotions expenses - most of it is to send thousands (I mean thousands) of free copies off to Radio Stations + extras for the DJ's.

    Radio stations generally don't accept payment to play something loads of times - thats not legal to my knowledge (sounds something too much like payola).

    And this is OLD news. There is a series of wacky rules (such as previous playlists CANNOT become available publically - only what you are playing currently) - go read it if you want to see what BS is in there.
  • This statement excludes whoever happens to be my girlfriend at the time. The fact that this has already been the same girlfriend for quite some time does not make any form of guarantuee for the future. All rights excluded.
  • The problem is that ASCAP in particular (but the rest are just as bad) is that they are ruthless about hunting down people. They routinely shake down bar owners for royalties for songs played on their jukebox. I recall last year reading a story (here perhaps) about ASCAP shaking down Scout camps for royalties for songs the kids sing around the campfire!

    The really sad part is that the artists really get very little out of this arrangement. After taking a very healthy cut off the top, ASCAP (et al) divvy up what's left according to a complicated formula that mostly takes into account current record sales & radio airplay. This means that a radio station that plays only Classic Rock pays in royalties for playing Pink Floyd & Led Zepplin, and then ASCAP pays that money out to Brittney Spears & N*Synch (or whatever other no-talent studio creation is at the top of the charts this week). The whole music industry is built around screwing the artists, as Courtney Love points out so well in her famous rant.

  • Re:And this surprises anybody, why? (Score:4)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:33AM (#728735) Homepage Journal
    Public Domain? HA! Nothing ever goes into the public domain anymore, not with the giant mouse of doom extending copyrights to the end of time; and don't even try to hide behind "fair use", the MPAA and RIAA are making sure that every possible circumstance is exempted from fair use.

    performance rights and the printing of the sheet music is protected.
    I don't think this is true, as long as the song was written before Walt made The Mouse (IE in the public domain), you are free to recreate the song in sheet music form or as sound waves as much as you like. Who would you pay the royalties to? The grandchildren of the composer? That totally violates the entire purpose of copyrights.

    Dang, in the preview window this looks like shameless karma whoring. Oh well.
  • If they're going to collect the royalties, they should do something to earn it. The publishers and the composers, singers, writers and musicians get money, and they do nearly all the work on them. The record companies don't create anything for webcasting, so why should they earn anything?

    If they want royalties, I say they should help market and produce webcast materials. Send out that CD of the new music, include some free CDs to give away, maybe some tee shirts, frisbees, whatever floats their boats, and if a webcaster uses it, they should pay the royalties back to the record label.

    But finding a loophole in the laws to collect for nothing? And they say they're working on behalf of the artists, who are already earning money. Shame shame, RIAA. Caught in another lie?

    Dragon Magic [dragonmagic.net]

  • We're already close to this ... (Score:3)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:34AM (#728737)
    Here in the U.S., businesses such as hair salons that play music radio stations have been targeted for fees. I'm not comnpletely certain, but I believe that if they play CDs, they're expected to also pay a fee for giving a 'performance'. I'm sure if the industry could figure out a way to get away with it, they'd find a way to charge you for playing your own CDs in your home.

  • Good thing you run technical operations and not the legal department. Your organization is paying for broadcast rights. However there are still (at least) two other rights associated with a musical work, recording rights and performance rights. By downloading music off Napster, you would be violating the recording rights, as you do not have the right to duplicate that recording.

    Maru
  • >> That's bleepin' scary!
  • "Section 80 does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else."

    Ripped from the mentioned website's FAQ.

    Is this for real? Is it just canada or other countries? Does this mean that as all my MP3's came from my 'friends' on napster I dont have one illegal thing on my computer (apart from DeCSS - but if they take that away they'll have to take the shirt off my back!)

    Of course, thats if I lived in Canada.

    Can I copy a friends copy? Can he borrow my CDWriter to copy my copy which I made of my friends copy?

    What about when I make a copy from my friends at the radio station when I press record?
  • All the desperate attempts to control what I want to listen to and/or watch drives me absolutely nuts.

    The 14-year period specified in the original copyright law sounded pretty good. About the only modification I might suggest is something requiring that the listener/viewer always have a way of determining the creator(s) of the copyrighted work, even after the copyright has expired, with the criminal penalty of fraud if someone tries to pass off someone else's work as theirs.
  • As as a side note, anyone who wants to run Visicalc (for the IBM PC) right now can download it at http://www.bricklin.com/visicalc.htm.

    I had VisiCalc for the Apple II also. In fact the only reason I have any clue what Excel 2000 or Gnumeric is supposed to do or why anyone would use a spreadsheet at all is because I read the VisiCalc manual back when I was 10 or whatever.

  • So what happens if you are a major radio station who has a web listening presence, like most major stations out there? You pay royalties to broadcast over the air, and then pay again when you broadcast over the net?

    What a profitable ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H artist-protecting idea!

  • A jukebox playing incedental background music in a bar, or playing a movie/sporting event on a tv in the corner is a lot different than a live band at a bar or exhibiting a movie in a theatre.

    The difference is that background music is just that -- background. That's not the primary reason people are coming. A live band probably IS the focus, and should [maybe] pay royalties if they are getting paid to perform. Part of me agrees with you regarding movies; but honestly, I think once a studio releases a movie to videotape or DVD they are pretty much giving up any right to tell you what you can do with the copy you purchased -- except to BROADCAST it, which is different than exhibiting it in a particular public place.

    By your definition I should pay royalties for singing in the shower if my neighbor can hear me doing it. Everyone who plays their car stereo loudly enough for anyone in another car should pay royalties [actually, I think those rude fsckers should be flogged, but that's another rant.]

    I think there's somthing very wrong with this sense of entitlement the entertainment industry has for getting paid every time a piece of recorded music/film gets played. Pay-per-view schemes like DivX are the media companies' wet dream. If they had their way, EVERYTHING you watch or listen to would be ppv or time-limited. Imagine buying your music on a cd-r with encrypted contents. You can only play it on a "blessed" player, and after you've played it N times, your player goes into write mode and erases it. It's only a matter of time before somebody trys a scheme like that.

    Intellectual property law is broken. It does not reflect the realities of the modern era.

  • Any other countries that someone knows about?

  • So, if I understand you correctly, the RIAA is trying to make sure the fees coming from web broadcast is going to them instead of to the artists. And they are using US law to get it.

    Does that mean that European or Asian web broadcasters won't have to pay anything at all?

    Money going to artists = GOOD. Money going to RIAA is BAD !

  • Well it is sort of valid in my opinion because the two are very different mediums. In broadcast radio, stations make money through traditional revenue (advertising on air) and non-traditional revenue (promotions, merchandising, etc.) The problem is really that schedule fees for ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC have been heavily weighted against the traditional revenue -- of which webcasters generally have little to none because they use banner ads! Plus the fact that webcasting *is* different from regular broadcasts. It can be much higer quality, much more "on-demand," and have a higher profit/listener radio than traditional broadcasters. They need a new model.

    ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC are changing policies to reflect the new medium, but because of the 'small pebbles' sort of problem in dealing with webcasters, they don't exactly have the facilities to deal with them effectively. (It took us 5 months to get BMI to notice us!)

    I would be greatful for a better (or at least effective) method of licensing webcasters. I don't really care who does it either. Let RIAA create and spin off some entity that licenses webcasts like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC do. Heck, they could even handle bulk licensing with these three big licensers and sell small license packages to webcasters just to sort of streamline the whole process.

    The point is that the current system doesn't fit webcasting. That's all. At least someone's finally talking about it and not just denying that internet-only radio stations do exist and are thriving without traditional revenue models.

    ~GoRK
  • After some trial and error with some fake numbers, you quickly learn the minimum fee is $264.

    ---
  • All they want to do is squash the small net radio operators just like they do to the meatspace radio stations. If you aren't part of the big "family" you don't get to play the "good" music unless you pay this different/higher rate. All it is going to do is force some webcasters underground, and therefore we will generate a pirate web-radio genre because of this greed.

    Most radio operators that operate Pirate radio, WANT desperately to run a legal station. But the big guys like the RIAA,BMI,FCC,etc.... do not want them to and therefore make it impossible for them to operate legally. (You try and start a station after paying almost 600Grand USD for the transmitter that is no better than a non-FCC certified transmitter, but has the shiny sticker, and then get gouged by BMI at the tune of $15,000 a year to play their music. After you notify them that you are actually a pee-wee power station (Less than 5KW and dont have the same coverage than the megawatt station down the street) and they reply with, we dont care.

    It is easier and safer to run a pirate station than it is to run a legal station. I know of 1 station here in michigan that has ran for 5 years now as pirate. They sound better than the top40 stations, and to a casual listener do not sound illegal.

    nobody reports them because they act like real radio, not the pirate crap that typically is broadcast... (you know, the 13 year old spewing 20 minutes of profanity, screaming for anarchy, and playing acid punk while overdeviating by 50%)

    I look foreward to the new pirate webradio the RIAA is forcing us to create!
  • Its kind of like that Seinfeld episode where Kramer wants to stop getting mail. Maybe the RIAA is finally saying to themselves "holy shit, we really don't have anything to offer, no one needs us." and then they use bully tactics like on Seinfeld when the fat guy scares Kramer and ...

    I hope I spelled Seinfeld right

  • Its reverse engineering and cloning it that takes smarts.

    But certainly not creativity.

  • The important thing to remember about BMI, ASCAP and SESAC is that they are organizations which directly represent the songwriter or publisher (very often these two are effectively the same). Also, ASCAP and BMI are government-regulated non-profit organizations. What this means is that all the proceeds (after operating expenses) go to the songwriters and publishers (try getting the record companies to agree to that deal!). I know SESAC is not so restricted, but it must be competetive with ASCAP and BMI to attract anyone.

    ASCAP, BMI and SESAC exist for the artists and publishers and are the only effective way an independant (like me) can collect money from any radio stations that might play my songs. Even college radio stations have to pony up and can generate some significant revenue for an independant artist.

    Most important of all, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC provide a stream of revenue to the songwriters that the record companies do not have anything to do with and they cannot touch. By trying to use DMCA (or anything else) as a ruse to collect what is not rightly theirs, they are really attacking the only pot they don't already have their filthy little hands in.

    This is especially important to songwriters who don't perform their own music. When someone buys a Celine Dion album (Ghod help them!), the record company (and, theoretically, Celine Dion) get paid. What the songwriter gets paid can be downright miniscule for many resons (contract terms, etc.) but when it gets played on a radio, the sogwriter gets paid, and the record company (and Celine) get precisely squat.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • BMI is one of the two big organizations that licenses music for public performance. (ASCAP is the other.) Radio stations, some restaurants, and other locations with "public performance" of copyrighted music have to pay fees to BMI & ASCAP to legally broadcast the copyrighted music managed by those companies.

    When I was general manager of a radio station in Pittsburgh (waves-through-the-air radio, not net radio), we were approached by BMI who wanted us to pay them more money to extend our license to cover our webcast.

    Our webcast is a mid-to-low-quality streaming MP3 version of our air signal. We had our lawyers write them saying that we were already paying licensing for our radio broadcast, and that the netcast was merely a simulcast. As such, it did nothing but increase our so-called potential listening audience, which our licensing fees are not a function of. We weren't playing any more copyrighted music, we were just playing it to (potentially) more people.

    They went away, and we never heard back from them one way or the other. Which was fine with us.

  • i hear you

    i miss REV also the Twin Cities music scene is just not the same.

    when ever i hear that G-Love or Soul Coughing(when they were togeather), Liz Phair etc.. are comming to town and i hear that 105 'Zone' is promoting it it just makes me sad. stations dont promote shows anymore; they just promote themselves at shows.

    Q
  • Shoutcast.com shutdown after threats from RIAA. Icecast.org shutdown because they knew they were next.... Al Gore agrees that the RIAA created "Music on the Internet" thus giving them control of that aspect of the Internet. Guess everyone should have realized that big buisness isn't going to just hand over all music rights to the Internet so maybe we just need to find a way to live together... My $.02
  • That would be pretty much what the RIAA is trying to facilitate here. You did read the article, didn't you?
  • I only put the second sentence in there to illustrate that you, like most Slashdotters, like to talk a lot but don't really have much real knowledge of what they talk about.

    Simply because I have never had any hands on knowledge of the Apple II does not negate the fact that VisiCALC was the first spreadsheet program available on a computer (which was all that I was trying to say). Therefore, your illustration that I "don't have much real knowledge" is null. Who cares if I have used an Apple II? It has nothing to do with the meat of my comment TO YOU.

    In fact, why you would use a quote from a comment that I made to someone else about what is essentially a different subject then the one in which we were conversing is beyond me.

    Your comment asked the question "how do all you OSS people know about streaming audio?" (I took the liberty of correcting your spelling). My comment was simply an answer to say, somewhat sarcasticly, "just because something is closed source/commercial doesn't mean that OSS can't duplicate the results."

    And no, my comment was not intended to imply that you are a youngster. It was intended to imply that your comment hinted at a certain amount of naivity (or perhaps I was just smelling a troll). I'm 30. How about you?
  • You never know who's playing your songs.

    Yeah, it sucks that it is so difficult to track downloads and demographic information on the web, but so painfully simple to get a list of all the people listening to your radio station at any given time. Umm... I think it works that way, anyhow...

    You never know how they got your song.

    Yeah -- the good thing about meat-space radio stations is that you always know where they got the songs. But people on the internet are thieves. They're all going straight to hell. Web-based radio stations will steal music.

    Song quality. Web-casters rarely have enough money to replace damaged music.

    Yeah, its a real shame that web-based businesses are having such a hard time getting venture capital nowdays. And I hate it when the songs on my hard drive gets scratches on them -- I have to go to all the trouble of ripping them again. This is hard, because I never know where I got them.

    --
    I respond to trolls because I like it. It feeds both our egos.
  • I can imagine certain parts of the recording industry not liking the idea of monitoring actual listening patterns. If this was to happen it would totally change the way that charts work, no longer would they depend solely on the sales of recorded media in a sample of outlets, but would accurately reflect what people are actually listening to. I suspect that there may be some rather discepencies between the two.
  • Well, they'd probably structure it more along the lines of extra fees _if_ you enjoy the music. So you'll pay the regular fee for the tracks that you hit fast forward on after a second to realise what song it is, and extra for the ones that you actually like enough to listen to.
  • It sounds like the RIAA has an absolutely top-notch proposal... assuming that you live in a place where the nuts hunt the squirrels.

    [with apologies to Napoleon XIV]
    --

  • This is an excellent point; the DMCA changes everything - giving copyright holders the stranglehold over 'readers' of that information that they have long sought.

    Traditional solutions (The ASCAP/BMI royalties) under previous law were a reasonable solution for the "How do you compensate creators for their contributions?" problem.

    The RIAA wants to use the DMCA to short circuit the payment of royalties to creators and put the payments into the pockets of the parasites at the RIAA and the record companies. If there is any way that the record companies can turn artists into slaves, rest assured they will. 'Suits' see artists are even bigger chumps than nerds are.

    I once met the lead guitarist in a band which sold 47 million records during its existence. He had a wooden box that said "Use RCA tubes" as the only thing he had to show from the experience. Various business types wound up with all of the money from those 47 million records.

  • Hong Kong, anyone?

    --Perianwyr Stormcrow
  • Bar owners - yes absolutely. They owe royalties on music that they play on their jukeboxes, in their DJ booths, and for covers that live bands play. They can't just go to the store and buy a CD for private use and then play it publicly -- the same way you couldn't open a movie theater and play copies of films you bought at WalMart (even if you didnt charge for it!). Bar owners are the absolute worst to whine about laws they don't know about and raise a stink about it. But a camp fire shakedown?- hmm seems the urban legend filter is kicking in there. Unless of course it was something like the popular Cowboy Breakfast things in TX ranches, where you will have 100-200 people out to your "campfire" and have a band playing country music or something. They owe ASCAP too.

    I hate dealing with these people as much as anybody, but your statement about ASCAP is totally off base. If you report properly to ASCAP about your music, they make sure that the funds get to the proper artists.

    ~GoRK
  • It can be much higer quality, much more "on-demand," and have a higher profit/listener radio than traditional broadcasters. They need a new model.

    Ok I agree with you that it can be "higher quality", and I agree that it can be "on demand", but I will have to totally disagree with concerning the profit/listener ratio. There are a couple of problems concerning webcasting. Where do you expect the profits to come from? In traditional media you have a local audio and local adverisements there is also a fairly clear demographic that you can target. With internet broadcasting there is no local regions or targets, everything in global, which make it a little harder to bordcast.

    Also take into consideration that the volume of listeners is alot smaller for webcasting. The most popular station in shoutcast right now pulls about 700 people during peak hours. There is one more thing for you to chew on. In traditional radio there is an entrance fee for setting up the equipment which is expensive, but the cost of broadcasting remains fairly constant regardless of how many people are listening.

    Webcaster on the other hand have a very low entrance fee, but the cost of broadcasting raises as the listener base increases. For instance I have a 768K DSL line, and I am streaming out a 128Kbps stream. Now each listener will suck approx 14K/sec of bandwidth (once you add TCP header etc..). so that means that means that I can support a total of about 50-52 listeners before my connection maxes out. My DSL connection cost me $140 a month. That means I spent roughhly $2.69 per listener, per month.

    Ok lets take this picture and scale it up some. A popular Seattle radio estimates that I gets about 110,000 listeners on avaerage. Lets apply a little math and see how much it would cost to supply a stream to that audience.
    2.69 * 110000 = 269000.

    Ok that is over a quarter-million dollars a month, so why dont you tell me how traditional media has a higher profit/listener ratio?

  • A quick clarification.

    A music publisher deals with the songwriter and the written (but not yet recorded) song. The record company deals with the performer and the recorded song.

    And a more extensive one.

    ASCAP/BMI/SESAC/MCPS/etc. deal with the songwriter and the music publisher. They're 'performance rights organizations'. The original author has the right to perform the song they have written. Anytime the song is performed by someone/something other than the original artist (radio, covers in clubs, muzak, tv commercials), then royalties are owed to the original author. The venues pay a licensing fee that allows them to play any piece that the PRO has rights to. In the United States, at this point, nothing is owed to the recording artist at all.

    This is a relevant point, because in some international equivalents to the US organizations, royalty rights are given both to the composer of a song and its performer. Be careful with your arguments here. No, the RIAA is probably not going to be the most responsible with distributing those royalties. If your cry is 'compensate the artists', though, you may be in favor of performers getting paid royalties. Not only for webcasts, though, it should be consistent -- which would mean paying the recording artist royalties for radio broadcasts, etc., as well.

    Royalties are paid 50% to the songwriter and 50% to the publisher. It's clear why the songwriter deserves to be paid, but there is debate over the value of the publisher's role.

    The confusion comes in because publishing rights are highly desireable and quite profitable. Therefore, many record companies negotiate clauses in songwriters' contracts that require them to sign over their publishing rights. This is a bummer, because independent artists are perfectly capable of doing their own publishing and thus receiving 100% of their royalties, but this is an entirely different issue.

    ---
    "The Constitution...is not a suicide pact."

  • Sorry if there's an empty post with the same title. Slapped the wrong key a second ago. To find out more about the whole royalties things check out B MI. Whether the holder of the copyright is the artist themselves or their label, its BMI that enforces the copyright. Artists and publishers join BMI for a fee, and BMI then tracks down who owes its members royalties. These guys can be like the secret police of the music world. If you're a live musician who plays standards, you have to be careful about what venues you play in larger cities because there might just be a BMI rep in there checking things out. If you publish a song book compiling other people's work, the BMI is there to make sure the original composers get their proper royaties. Same for performances on TV, radio, and now the web. And, as long as BMI has been around, people have been trying to dodge them. On one hand, its great to have an 800 pound gorilla looking out for your intellectual property rights, but on the other its a real drag when you're gigging at jazz clubs and the gorilla sits on you. One trick often employed is making enough of a variation in the song and changing the title that BMI can't say its this original work anymore. This results in some real fun performances. Then there's the near legendary book of standards "The Real Book" which is an underground anthology of standards published so as to avoid BMI royalties. Anyway, right or wrong, it behooves anyone who's distributing or replaying music in anyway to check out BMI and know who they are and what they do. [bmi.com]

  • Re:Some other good ideas: (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Al Gore pioneered the field of baldfaced lying during a political campaign. Before Mr. Gore, candidates were considered to be accountable for what they said. Post-Gore, no politician will feel obliged to tell the truth. Whatever story will please the crowd can be made up on the spot.

    Mr. Gore, needless to say, is also the poster boy in the Campaign Finance Reform effort. It almost seems like he's trying to force government oversight, just in his actions.

    But that's enough about lying sons of bitches for now. Back to the usual program....
  • No, I'm not Lord British from the BBSing days, nor did I create Ultima.

  • Re:From Experience (Score:5)

    by kerrbear ( 163235 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @10:55AM (#728773)

    We're talking like 100 bucks per year, for Christ's sake!

    The most bizzare thing about paying these royalties is that as long as the songs we play are covered under the licenses, we can obtain the music via any source and broadcast it legally.

    So what you are saying is that for a few hundred bucks a year I can get all the music I want from any source as long as I broadcast it? Ok, sign me up- Forget paying $20 a CD when I can get just about every song on the planet for $300. I'll just broadcast to myself.

  • To be expected. (Score:5)

    by FPhlyer ( 14433 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:11AM (#728774) Homepage
    Of course the record company wants to collect royalties! The development and adoption of the Internet as a medium surpases anything ever seen with either Radio or Television. The RIAA is looking at the Internet as the biggest cash cow to hit the world EVER. You have to expect the recording industry to do everthing in their power to get their fist into our pockets. It makes good business sense. A lot of people claim that the RIAA is trying to shutdown Napster, Scour, etc. because they "Don't get it." This is not the case. The Recording Industry "Gets it" probably more than anyone else (slashdotters like me included.) The RIAA is going to continue to appear to fight "internet technologies" like streaming webcasts of music, file sharing and the like BECAUSE they are great technologies. The RIAA just wishes that they had developed them first so they could be the ones making the profits. The RIAA will, of course, try and shut them all down so that in a few years, when they are ready with their business plan, they can mimic the exact same technologies themselves. And make the money from them.

  • RIAA@home (Score:5)

    by Gefiltefish ( 125066 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:11AM (#728776)
    I'm just wondering when the RIAA will start charging me for playing music at home.

    I wonder if there will be and added surcharge depending on the number of people in my house at the time.

    Also, will the RIAA charge me depending on the number of pets I have who might listen to the music being played.
  • Actually - like most artists he wasn't the least bit interested in the legal end of the music business - he was more interested in the music end of it. Which is why he and his group sold so many records. He could have devoted all of his time and energy to tracking every penny that came in - in which case the songs wouldn't have sold since he would then have been just another soulless bean counter.

    Arrogant smart asses like you - who have all the answers - never sell any records, never produce any products anyone wants to buy and never write any programs that work; you are too busy being arrogant smart asses to bother with any of that actually doing anything of value to humanity stuff.

  • Sources of Revenue (Score:3)

    by blueg3 ( 192743 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:13AM (#728779)

    I'm sure someone's mentioned this before, but we really should just put ads into Napster and pay artists royalties from that. I think that Napster has at least the advertising potential of radio. I mean, five million users.

    Sure, some of us would get around the ads, but most people wouldn't. They wouldn't really get in the way or anything.

    It's an idea that needs work, sure, but I think it would be good. I certainly have no problems giving the artists the money they've earned, it's when the RIAA gets involved that I complain.

  • From Experience (Score:5)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:13AM (#728781) Homepage Journal
    I run the technical operations for a larger webcast company (one that produces our own music stations). For a very long time now, we have been paying ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC fees just like traditional broadcast stations.

    I'm sorry for all the shoutcast people out there, but legally, if you run a radio station for profit or not, be it Internet or Broadcast, you have to either pay royalties through ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC or you can alternatively negotiate with *EACH INDIVIDUAL ARTIST WHOSE RECORDINGS YOU PLAY*.. in practice you have to really do both, as many independant bands are not signed or covered under ASCAP BMI or SESAC licensing.

    Another thing I should mention is that these fees are NOT EVEN EXPENSIVE for small stations (read: stations with little to no profit) We're talking like 100 bucks per year, for Christ's sake!

    The most bizzare thing about paying these royalties is that as long as the songs we play are covered under the licenses, we can obtain the music via any source and broadcast it legally. We usually get our music via promotional lists directly from record companies, but if we wanted to, we could LEGALLY download and broadcast music from Napster users! I know of many regular broadcast stations in the midwest that are gaining an extra day or two (mailing lead time) by downloading music from Napster so that they can play the songs one or two days ahead of competing stations.

    What a twisted mess this all is, isn't it?!?

    ~GoRK
  • Actually publishing companies of any type have long been guilty to trying to rape the artists who produce the product they publish.

    The complaint is not just against the recording industry - it is just that they are the ones with which more people on this forum are familiar.

    Oh wait, I just re-read your post and realized it is a troll - never mind.

  • Why?

    Why should there be two different standards?

    The recording industry and motion picture industry of America are the most bureaucratic fascist set of companies on earth.

    If your ideas are not in vogue, meaning not some copy of a prior successful movie, you can zark off and put your idea in the drek pile.

    You say, what about Blair Witch Project. Fair enough, the guys that shot it couldn't show it at Sundance and had set up the film co execs to see it at a restaurant. Fine. It takes some big courage to do that sort of thing (unless you're in SoCal, The Pit Of All Evil, in which case the LAPD will beat your sorry ass if they don't shoot you first).

    These industries, like any established megalithic company, are refusing to change with the times. If the RIMPAA wanted to, they could have embraced MP3 and downloadable distribution. But their claims of '(potential) piracy' and 'artist's rights' (laugh now) swayed Sonny Bono's widow (who probably would've done this anyway, considering the speed with which she took his seat) to make a new copyright length of life plus 70 years for humans and 95 years for coroporations. (This means that a good number of copyrights will be held longer by a corporation than by a person's estate.)

    But back to the issue. The difference between a broadcaster and a bandcaster is that the broadcaster paid the FCC a truckload of cash for broadcast rights and is highly regulated, while the bandcaster doesn't pay nearly as much in connection costs (unless dude's sucking on a T3 or higher), doesn't have the same rules to follow, and can reach people worldwide.

    If the RIMPAA starts charging, expect a lot of bandcasters to move to domains ending with a .ca, .uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .jp, .au ......

    Nothing like extranational status to protect your sorry ass..

  • Re:From Experience (Score:3)

    by aufait ( 45237 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @11:29AM (#728789) Homepage
    But a camp fire shakedown?- hmm seems the urban legend filter is kicking in there.

    Your filter needs some tweeking. A quick search found several links. Two are:

    Pipeline [pipeline.com] (It is a long article so you may want to search on girl scout.)

    Bizjourna ls [bizjournals.com]

  • I assume there is a regular ASCAP/BMI mechanism for collecting and dsitributing these royalties

    ASCAP/BMI/SESAC distribute royalties to participating artists based on the percentage of airtime they get. Playlists are surveyed to come up with a probability density function.

    I don't see why this doesn't work for webcasting: if you factor in the number of listeners, it's somewhat reasonable.

  • A little thick (Score:3)

    by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:15AM (#728798)
    This one [vmgworldwide.org] is a little thick, but it's a nice biased look at what ASCAP/BMI are all about. Whether the RIAA or ASCAP/BMI control the online version of this extortion scheme so they can continue to foist bad music on the public is irrelevant.

  • License cost calculator for ASCAP (Score:4)

    by Monte ( 48723 ) on Thursday October 05, 2000 @09:17AM (#728801)
    Can be found at:

    http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/license.html

  • The problem here is that the jukebox systems are in place to feed content between songs which is much harder to do with a traditional stream. The net effect is generally the equivalent of a continuous stream, and IMHO should be licensed appropriately. (Pay-per-listen would be a different ball game though!)

    For webcasters, the licensing is normally all-inclusive. One fee. It doesnt matter how many times you play a particular song as long as you're licensed to play it.
  • I still don't understand exactly who a publisher is, and what they do (other than collect money).
    Examples?
  • also, if you run a bar and live music is played, you should pay ASCAP a yearly fee which would cover you for bands playing "cover-tunes." and believe it or not, ASCAP enforces this by sending detectives to bars where bands are playing, seeing if bands cover songs by ASCAP artists (eg Freebird by Lynard Skynard) and then if they have not paid the yearly ASCAP fee, they sue them (or offer them the chance to buy one with a fine attached. ) this happened to my buddy's bar in TX. i never knew that existed.

    ASCAP, as i understand, it is an organization that looks out for the well-being of the artists.

    RIAA is an organization that looks out for the record labels.

  • Wouldn't a Record Company BE a publisher?

    I think ASCAP and BMI and all collect the fees, and then redistribute them to artists and publishers, which may include record companies.

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