Small Webcasters Offered a Rate Break, Reject It 123
Pontifex minimus writes "Music royalty collection group SoundExchange has offered an olive branch to small webcasters. They are willing to delay the exorbitant new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board until 2010 for small webcasters in hopes that they can keep Congress from passing the Internet Radio Equality Act. Larger outfits, like Live365 and Pandora would not be affected and would have to pay the new rates. '"Although the rates revised by the CRB are fair and based on the value of music in the marketplace, there's a sense in the music community and in Congress that small webcasters need more time to develop their businesses," said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange.' SaveNetRadio rejected SoundExchange's offer, saying that it 'throws large webcasters under the bus.'"
SoundXchange needs sound leadership (Score:2)
Re:SoundXchange needs sound leadership (Score:4, Funny)
Erhm - who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
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How many people know about nitrogen? A hell of a lot less than about oxygen! Genius! Pure Genius!
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Bzzt, Wrong. Mod parent down -1, doesn't know what he's talking about.
The streaming radio station I listen to the most is idobi [idobi.com], and they do NOT have ads. The only "ad" I ever hear is a short 30 second soundbyte explaining about SaveNetRadio, and how they won't be able to continue operating unless they pay the new fees.
They already do. They want to UP the fees.
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Radio, whatever the transmission medium, is advertisement.
The streaming radio station I listen to the most is idobi, and they do NOT have ads.
Maybe you should read the whole post before you respond. The OP specifically said that the music itself was an advertisement, and that was the main point of the post. Make it too hard for people to hear new music, and they will stop buying new music. At least, that's the theory.
I suspect that the sanctioned (i.e. big end of town) outlets -- big webcasters, regular radio stations, etc -- will continue to pay whatever fees are asked of them, and the only ones to feel this will be the smaller webcasters an
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1. Price Internet radio into oblivion.
2. Negotiate a deal for your wholly-owned-subsidiary Internet radio.
3. Cackle gleefully as you enjoy iron control of another medium.
4. Profit!
No missing steps, although #3 is optional.
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When will they learn? (Score:1)
Oh wait, they won't.
Better join RIAA now.
they know (Score:4, Insightful)
Retroactive rates (Score:3, Interesting)
Raw Deal For Artists Too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sound Exchange will also forbid free and lower cost competition, regardless of artist and publisher intention [slashdot.org]. They will collect their little fees from everyone, in violation of Creative Commons terms. Those who want their royalties will have to join them, which makes it look like they have the artist's endorsement. Then they will have to trust Sound Exchange to give them what was really collected, less fees. In other words, the RIAA monopoly on music distribution will be extended into the future against the will of artists and the public. There is no technical justification for this, it's pure corruption.
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The statutory license does not exclude directly negotiated licensing deals as I understand it. No one can forbid direct licensing deals--the right to engage in these kinds of agreements cannot be circumvented by Congress or anyone else. In other words services are free to use Creative Commons licensed material or material under any other license or agreement. If a service exclusively uses such material, it certainly seems that they would be exempt from SoundExchange fees and reporting. If only some of their
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As I understand it, SoundExchange won't license anything to you unless you pay them royalties on everything you play, regardless of origin. If that is the case then you could indeed play 100% CC-licenced media without worrying about royalities, but you'd have to pay full royalties on everything if you wanted to mix in non-CC media.
Really? (Score:2)
No one can forbid direct licensing deals--the right to engage in these kinds of agreements cannot be circumvented by Congress or anyone else.
So, is that why there's already a nominal fee radio stations must pay composers? It seems this right of yours has already been circumvented and is about to be circumvented yet again. It's difficult to understand because it makes no sense.
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Re:Raw Deal For Artists Too. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, that's really a raw deal. If SE can just start collecing fees on their behalf without the artists consent, and thereby force the artist's consent, they don't really have a right to the fees. (moral right, i mean, legal rights are screwy)
If the artists are getting fees subtracted, they're already getting screwed, blatantly. In addition to the unspoken usurpation issue.
I mean, imagine this conversation with a coworker,
"Oh, hey, I picked up your paycheck for you."
"Um.. thanks..That explains why it wasn't there when I went to pick it up."
"No problem. Here's what's left after my 'picking up fee'"
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(3) Licenses for transmissions by interactive services. --
(C) Notwithstanding the grant of an exclusive or nonexclusive license of the right of public performance under section 106(6), an interactive service may not publicly perform a sound recording unless a license has been granted for the public performance of any copyrighted musical work contained in the sound recording: Provided, That such license to publicly perform the copyrighted musical work may be granted
The scorpion and the frog (Score:5, Insightful)
The global music media corporations know that all the fighting new technology and RIAA extortion is not in their best interest. But they can't help it. It's what they do. They're on auto-pilot self-destruct. They're smart guys, they know this. They just can't do anything about it.
Their entire perspective is based on the not-unrealistic assumption that they are the focal point of the best music in the world. The best groups, the most talented artists have and will continue to come to them in order to distribute the recordings. They don't believe that anyone interested in a musical career would not come to them, on their terms. That's the key to their entire 'take it or leave it' approach. Because they honestly believe that no one will leave it.
What may happen is a transformation of media from a centralized distribution to a scattered and disorganized collection of xenophobic subcultures who aren't interested in sharing their music or media works. Should this happen, the media corporations most likely won't notice it. They sell primarily to young people and the percentage of people who are young is rapidly growing. So their market is growing. The fact that their sales of CDs are stagnant is truly amazing. Most likely, it's not true.
I encourage people to gradually disassociate themselves from the products of the global media corporations. Yes, it is true that you will miss great music. You will suffer the occasional social embarrassment of not knowing (actually not knowing, not pretending to not know) who the latest stars are. I'm not going to claim that it's worth it or a self-righteous thing to do. I'm just suggesting, all the celebrity media, let it slide away. There are other things more important. Concentrate on them instead.
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Como se dice in Espanol (Score:1, Troll)
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Translation (Score:5, Funny)
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Insightful, because you hit the nail right on the head. The small Internet broadcasters aren't going to take a deal that would make it uneconomical for them to grow bigger later on. The prospect of just scraping by with no hope of future growth is not a good deal for them.
This sounds very much like the mafia letting someone get into the business on the condition that they don't move into bigger territory later on.
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Per-play royalty on singles? (Score:3, Interesting)
What if, in order to release a single, studios (et al) had to give up broadcast rights to that song. Anyone who obtains a legitimate copy of the song can broadcast it whenever and however he/she likes, be that internet, radio or birthday party. The label/artist/whomever still controls all rights to sell/distribute the song, and the rest of the songs on the album that aren't marked as singles.
I know this clashes with the "make money from every angle" that the industry wants, but it seems like a reasonable trade (to me).
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If the recording industry was even close to sane, something very much like that would probably happen. Radio stations could play certain songs for free, but would have to pay to play others. The promoter picks the free songs... Albums would contain more than 1 good song, and people would actually like entire CDs again. They'd be willing to purchase
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If you want to retain control of your content, you can't blow it all over the place. You need to keep it on your own network, and only distribute it to people who have entered into agreements with you, saying that they'll respect your IP. Transmit it to people who don't want it or haven't entered into agreements with you, and they can do what they
Pity peoples families are at stake (Score:2)
Re:Pity peoples families are at stake (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry that may sound harsh but that's how it is. If my employer goes bust because nobody wants our services anymore, then I lose my job. Do you think there's people out there who say: "Let's go to these guys, cos their employees starve"? Not buying their products is the only way we can fight back and stand up for our rights.
can internet radio play free music? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:can internet radio play free music? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:can internet radio play free music? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it would work by allowing a broadcaster to search the site for artists that are willing to offer their music under certain terms, select those of interest, copy the broadcaster's specific information in to a form pre-filled with the terms, have the broadcaster digitally sign the contract (if I recall correctly Clinton signed a bill making a digital signature legally binding the same way as an old fashioned analog signature is binding) and then submit the contract to the artists who could log in and review the contract and sign it or not...or perhaps digitally sign all of them at once, or all of them with particular terms at once. Then once the contracts were signed a PDF would be generated and given to each party to print out and file.
There would, of course, also be a mechanism for either party to amend the terms of the boiler plate contract, although doing so would flag the contract as one needing special attention.
A clever extension of this would allow the artist to upload his/her music to the contract generation site so that as soon as the broadcaster signed the contract it could buy copies of the artists tracks and download them immediately.
Creative Commons licenses sound good at first, but no actual signed contract explicitly changes hands. The above system would solve that problem without being an aggregator itself; it merely facilitates the two parties reaching an explicit signed agreement.
Finally the good part: SoundExchange would have to keep track of all of these exceptions to the statutory licensing.
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collectively, we should probably start to wake up [myindiradio.com].
Re:can internet radio play free music? (Score:5, Funny)
Godot
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It's a Seinfeld thing.
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That's how screwed up the system is.
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A rhetorical question (Score:5, Insightful)
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The good side is that internet radio will be killed off. The MAFIAA tells me that would be a good thing, and they are on the side of artists, so it must be true.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_radio [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline [wikipedia.org]
RIAA are stupid enough to try to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. They have decided that they want it to have it all, their way. For them its "My way or the highway". Unfortunately,
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Show me the money... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Show me the money... (Score:5, Interesting)
The barrier to entry for recording and publishing music is incredibly low right now. This means that the number of competitors to the big music industry is increasing at a very rapid rate. How does a company, or group of companies, compete when the market they have dominated suddenly has thousands and thousands of competitors with the ability to deliver their product just via the same methods as the big companies? Worse, how do you compete against those who are willing to create products and give them away? Smart companies will see the trend and will ask themselves, "how can I make this work for me?" The big music industry isn't sure how to compete and so they are fighting the trend and lashing out any way they can.
Mod up (Score:1)
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A: Because the **AA isn't happy with just a fair cut of the pie. They want the WHOLE pie, and don't want ANYONE else to have a piece.
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They don't. They intend instead to kill off independent and small web radio stations, and therefore to maintain their monopoly. This isn't obvious to you?
someone explain something to me... (Score:4, Interesting)
There was an article some time ago that ALL internet radio stations, regardless of content, had to pay SE on a per-song basis. I really don't understand how they have the power or the right to do something like that?
For example if I setup a radio station that played only freely-available, royalty-less music. How does SE get away with charging me money to play said music? Is the RIAA that powerful that they can manage to dictate legislation that way? have i missed something obvious?
What I would be curious to know is, if I wrote a computer program that generated random music (lets ignore the technical feasibility of that and assume its possible) and make a radio station that played that (and only that) could SE force me to pay them royalties? If that is the case, how is that even in the most bizarre parallel universe either fair or just?
Perhaps even a simpler argument was if i were an artist and ran an internet radio station solely playing my own music, can SE force me to pay them royalties? It just seems really stupid to me...
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Fairness is for dirty commies; in America, the law comes from capitalism :)
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Who said it did?
England lost in a war between America and Russia o_O?
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Yeah, apparently you missed the memo.
You became our bitches while the Russians exported spies and polonium to you as a waste facility. I'd say you lost
-nB
(please be kind I was attempting to be funny, how's your PM became our bitch? rather than the generic "you", better?)
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Oh, but, you see, USA went to Vietnam to stop communists from beginning massacres there. The problem is, when you do such things, people die, so you hope really hard that less innocent people will die from your effort to stop genocidal ideologues than the amount that would die in the hands of those same genocidal ideologues were they left alone.
In Vietnam, for instance, the moment the count
Re:someone explain something to me... (Score:5, Informative)
As is the case for music, the royalty is under a statutory license. That is, rather than have everyone suffer the huge headaches and transactional costs of negotiating rights for each piece of music individually, everyone can pay a fee set forth by law and get a license automatically, regardless even of whether the copyright holder agrees. (Because his copyright doesn't apply to people who pay the statutory license; that's how the law is written) Everyone is free to make their own arrangements, but in practice few bother to do so since it is really a huge pain in the ass.
The Copyright Office was empowered to perform certain administrative tasks related to this, and one thing that was done was to name designated agents to whom the statutory license royalty can be paid so that the payor will be in compliance with the law. Currently, the only one is SoundExchange.
If you have a separate agreement with the relevant copyright holders, you don't need to pay SoundExchange. If you are playing a recording to which you are the copyright holder, or a recording which is in the public domain, you don't need to pay SoundExchange.
Is the RIAA that powerful that they can manage to dictate legislation that way?
Yes. The industries involved in copyright matters have been dictating legislation from the beginning of the 20th century on. This is nothing new.
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If you have a separate agreement with the relevant copyright holders, you don't need to pay SoundExchange. If you are playing a recording to which you are the copyright holder, or a recording which is in the public domain, you don't need to pay SoundExchange.
Ok, thats not too bad in that case... from reading the various articles about it all, it was sounding to me that any radio station playing any kind of music, under any type of license were forced to pay SE. Which to me sounds like EMC collecting a licensing fee for every piece of storage (and then passing that currency onto the real storage vendor if they ask for it) in the world based on the fact they are some licensing source storage (poor analogy i know, but hopefully that it makes some sence).
Having
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I'd suggest a correction: where you write
performer should be replaced by publisher. The degree to which the publisher will share these revenues with the performers will be governed by the terms of the contract between the publisher and performer. With the record labels' track record (performance royalties from ITMS sales are still netted a percentag
Worse than you imagine. (Score:5, Informative)
No free alternatives are allowed. [slashdot.org] It is obvious that people would flock away from these fees if they could, so they won't be given the chance. This will be enforced the same way the current ban on terrestrial broadcast is enforced. Because internet broadcasts are not carried over a limited publicly owned spectrum, there is no technical justification for this system, it's purely anti-competitive - designed to perpetuate the RIAA member companies into the future when they would naturally die off.
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Thanks,
Eddie
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I would like you to take a look at the very first comment to your journal.
I did, it's wrong.
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Legally, they can't force you, but they will probably give it a good try. I'm sure their lawyers are busy coming up with wording for their letters that leaves the impression that you have no choice but to pay without actually stating that. Probably something along the lines of making threats that if you fail to pay this fee, you could be brought up on
Broadcast (Score:4, Insightful)
they shouldn't be paying a penny more than the terrestrial stations, which has always been a simple composition mechanical.
soundexchange's first round of performance royalties in june '02 killed some 40,000 bedroom broadcasters overnight.
2010's next round will simply finish off the rest.
- js.
and since when (Score:2)
Arse backward business model (Score:2)
Shouldn't the music industry and artist PAY the over-the-air/internet radio station?
current:
1. make music
2. charge broadcasters for pay-per-play royalty
3. free marketing and advertising through broadcasters
4. sell music license to listeners
5. profit
So in an essence, music industry is making profit over alr
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Obviously you are not a subscriber to Sirius and the like. And you don't listen to any of the radio stations that come with your cable tv connection...
The Business Angle (Score:2, Insightful)
Free/donation based internet stations play the same music advertising driven stations play, but without the annoyance of commercial interruption.
Free/Donation based stations usually have the goal of generating just enough revenue to cover their expenses, while advertising driven stations hope to generate a prof
This is what they call an offer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds great for everyone, you ask me...I get to play music I love, people get to hear music they may never hear outside the drunken haze of a goth club, and the artists get free exposure, along with links and ads to their music if you wanted to buy it.
I know this model works because I was (and am) a live365 subscriber for years, and have bought at least two dozen albums based solely on the music I heard on particular stations, music to which I would not otherwise have been exposed. In fact, rips of those albums are a large part of what I spin today on my own station.
And as for that, today, with mirrorshades radio, I have artists sending me music asking to get put into rotation, and listeners, writing to tell me how great this track or that was and that they just grabbed it off iTunes. I know at least one guy who went to the VNV Nation concert here in Atlanta after hearing them on my station -- he'd never heard them before, and what's that mean for VNV Nation? A ticket sale they wouldn't have otherwise had, not to mention whatever swag he probably bought while he was there.
Artists get increased exposure and sales. Listeners get music and choice. I (and my fellow broadcasters) get to play to whatever niche market we choose. Everyone gains, and no one loses, except for the RIAA, hawking their antiquated and outmoded business model.
I've said it before but I'll say it again -- there ain't no Benjamens in the net radio trade. We broadcast for love of the music and artists enjoy the exposure. I was lucky enough to get free hosting for my stream, allowing me a great deal of versatility, but many small broadcasters turn to live365 and similar hosts for cheap, reliable broadcasts, for which they pay their dues and offer free advertising in exchange.
If the majority of people who use live365 as their broadcast platform could afford the rates that soundexchange is demanding, they wouldn't be on live365 to begin with -- they'd have their own dedicated servers with no ads and listeners limited only by bandwidth. As is so often the case, the Big Guys are beating up on the only segment of the population that can't defend themselves.
Stop treading on us, and let the music play.
I love the 80's (Score:2, Insightful)
That was successful and in the music industry's mind all these internet radio stations are just a new version of pirate radio.
The only flaw in their thinking is that while before they were hijacking the airwaves and breaking the FCC's laws, Now they are not breaking any laws and aren't hijacking an
obligatory questions (Score:2)
- Where does this money go to?
- In how far is this reasonable to artists broadcasting their own works?
I am starting to believe all these companies (mostly ran/supported/requested) by the RIAA/MPAA/... are there only to stiffle creativity and to push their products down my throat. Someone please correct me or are there really people trying to tell other artists to join or "something bad might happen with your creativity" ? Maybe ignorance is bliss.Re: (Score:1, Informative)
take the issue to the artists (Score:1)
I am not a US citizen or resident, so I don't have the option of calling my senator or representative. So instead, I have started sending emails to artists whose music I have purchased as a direct result of having heard it on internet radio from the US.
I don't buy music every day, but I do buy some, and almost all of it because I heard it on the internet and I liked it (...and then managed to find it for sale online without DRM, but that's a separate issue).
I'd be willing to bet that a lot of small/in
Better analogy (Score:2)
It's like going to a flea market, kicking everyone in the balls, and then buying a few moldy baseball cards from that one guy in the corner so you can claim you're a legitimate patron.
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dad, have you been drinking again?
not all deals are good (or fair) (Score:2)
Newsflash! (Score:1)
http://zenapolae.com/ [zenapolae.com]
Great! There offering to break kneecaps (Score:2)
It's still extortion. I hope it works. (I'm a podcaster. Podsafe music forever! Fuck the RIAA and ASCAP/BMI. Who needs them?)
This Means One Of Two Things..... (Score:1)
Results of RIAA action (Score:1)
$500 Minimum Rate -- Not THAT Awful (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone know what payment royalties current webcasters must pay? For the all the crybabying and hubabaloo I've seen very little in terms of comparison. Please link me some rules!
Of course, the real fucked up situation is the fact that we have to pay SoundExchange, the biggest scam organization on the planet. They were spun off from everyones favorite RIAA in 2000 as an independent entity responsible for collecting and distributing broadcast dues. But these fuckers will never give a dog damned dime to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, no matter how many times I play their discography. The money we pay them doesnt do jack shit for the authors and artists we play. I'd like to see their profit margins and executive salaries, so I can complete the trifecta and cackle myself to death. These guys are the worst of the worst, and should be aborted like a bad mistake. The fact that we pay mafioso organizations like this at all is just criminal. Frankly I'd much rather track down every artists I play and give them $5.
Man I am loving this!! (Score:1)
Re: Please mod parent Troll (Score:1)
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Re: A limited amount of troll food (Score:1)