ARIA Sells a Licence for DJs to Format Shift Music 239
lucas writes "The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) has set up a new licence to let DJs format shift their music to use at gigs.
DJs will need to pay a licence fee to copy music they already own legally from one format to another for ease of use, and as a back-up in case originals get lost or stolen.
Criminal penalties for DJs involved in "music piracy" are up to sixty thousand dollars and 5 years imprisonment. There are also on-the-spot fines of over one thousand dollars."
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Botany Bay is actually quite a nice place now. The people we really don't like get sent to Woomera, Christmas Island and Naru.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
this latest lot.. well, they haven't really shown a position on it yet, afaik.
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Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
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Dumb and dumber (Score:2, Funny)
Just when we thought RIAA was bad... (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't buy into this... (Score:5, Insightful)
With the number of DJs here, I would not expect all of them to even know of this rule or for the ARIA to suddenly take all "offenders" to court. Don't feed the hands that bite you!
-Aly.
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You missed out John Peel. How could you?
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Could also include radio DJs (although I would assume that they would already have special licenses since they're broadcasting and have been the biggest target of music licensing and copyright issues for the past century).
I did not RTFA so I don't know what type (types) the law applies to.
ARIA to be charged for musician advertising? (Score:3, Insightful)
Has the world gone bonkers? (Score:5, Interesting)
You either:
1. Buy (and subsequently own) the music on the physical media. Then you are legally allowed to do whatever you want with it, including selling.
or
2. Buy a license to listen to the music. Then you can media-shift all you want, as you are licensing the music. You never have to rebuy it either, if your disk breaks, just download the music, you already have a license.
This thievery has to stop. It is insane.
Imagine a world where the people weren't such meek sheep.
Re:Has the world gone bonkers? (Score:4, Insightful)
They can simply say that you have the license to listen to the music on THAT media you purchased.
mod parent up (Score:2)
Generally, if you don't like the power that copyright owners have over us then don't give them so much bloody power.
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2. Buy a license to listen to the music. Then you can media-shift all you want, as you are licensing the music. You never have to rebuy it either, if your disk breaks, just download the music, you already have a license.
Says who? If you have a license, you're bound by whatever the license stipulates. Since you don't own anything, you don't have any ownsership rights like first sale or fair use or anything like that. You're thinking of one possible license which grants you everything you want, but there's no more reason a media-bound content license should be any more invalid than a computer-bound OEM software license. Licensing does away with pretty much all the pesky problems of selling anything, because you can agree to
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You buy the song, the file and the license prevents you from sharing it or reproducing it for public use. AFAIK, license for listening is weird.
2006 copyright law changes (Score:5, Informative)
In 2006, the government passed a law making format shift legal. In particular, it would be legal to copy from a CD to an iPod.
It turns out this is only for "private, domestic use", which wouldn't apply to DJs on commercial premises.
Format shifting fact sheet [copyright.org.au]
Re:2006 copyright law changes (Score:4, Interesting)
From the fact sheet:
Heh! Can't even distribute it to your family members...
I can see the 'A' slowly shifting... ARIA becomes RIAA. Give it six months and the malicious law suits will begin...
Since the venues are already paying a licensing fee for public performance, maybe DJs should 'sell' their music (in all its formats) to the venue for the duration of the gig. I know it doesn't get around the 'private use' element of the act, but I'm sure there will be some creative workarounds.
I bet there aren't many DJs in Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people will argue you just buy a license (Score:2)
So when are they going to stop calling it buying? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So when are they going to stop calling it buyin (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So when are they going to stop calling it buyin (Score:2)
They don't call it "buying" - They call it "stealing". If the recording industry had its way, we'd have to fork over $16 for a "license" in the form of a shiny plastic disc (non-transferrable and corporeally-bound, of course - Don't go thinking that just because you "license" their content you have some silly rights to either resell it or to keep u
Don't DJs promote music? (Score:2)
Yes, copyright infringement is illegal, but paying to shift formats (from disc to any more portable format) should fall under fair use. And DJs already pay royalties to be allowed to play the music. So why should they have to pay twice?
The realities on the ground for Pro DJ's (Score:5, Interesting)
As a rule, when speaking of bigger names, not only do the record labels definitely give them the
music for free, actually they beg them to play it. Now suddenly the same DJ's who were GIVEN
all of these songs from the record labels, the producers or specialized promotion companies for free
would have to pay for the use of them?
A while back, a little known organization in the UK named the PPL managed to get similar laws enacted [bbc.co.uk]
To my knowledge, no one has ever gotten busted for not complying with their arcane rules
which border on extortion pure and simple, and are impossible to comply with.
What's happening pure and simple is that many of the people who make up the voting boards of these
entities are totally overwhelmed by technology they just do not understand, and are passing measures
which they believe in earnest are going to help stem the tides of something they feel they can still control.
As someone posted above, paying such tax is only helping legitimize something which is patently
unfair at best, and not ever going to be a solution to anything other than yet another desperate attempt
at trying to put the proverbial cat back in the box, when the box itself has all but disappeared.
Let's not even go into details on who is going to get the money collected (probably pop artists
whose songs never get played once in the clubs, but who have enough airplay stats to register
on the radar of performing rights societies... LOL)
Who thought the dying throes of an entire industry were going to be that much fun?
Z.
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Fix all THE MISSPELLINGS in the article!! (Score:2)
RIAA Sells a License for DJs to Format Shit Music
Which seems to make more sense.
Performance fees are also going up (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Performance fees are also going up (Score:5, Interesting)
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Fair rate... (Score:2)
"Have to pay a fair rate/pay their share."
Which translates into "Paying whatever the !@#$% we want. Even if it's more than all their profits.
Is this not already enforced in the UK? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.djlicence.org.uk/faq.html [djlicence.org.uk]
"I only use original CDs in my performance, do I need these licences?
No, these licences are for copying or dubbing music tracks to pc or mp3 player.
These licences also DO NOT allow you to copy from CD to CD-R.
To understand more about which licences apply where download the NADJ Licensing Grid [djlicence.org.uk]."
DJs pay far more for a single already! (Score:2, Informative)
About time DJ's (Score:2)
Please tell me... (Score:2)
Five years in the slammer for making a mixtape..? (Score:2)
pointless change (Score:4, Insightful)
Horrible. Is there any way to go back to the old appearance?
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Just because buttons are ugly by default on Windows doesn't mean you should mess with the interface of others.
What's more, I see that the Preview, Quote Parent, Options and Cancel buttons at the bottom of my reply window are still regular Aqua-styled buttons.
DON'T MESS WITH GUI's!
Not to mention that this new interface doesn't even offer me a "Submit" button ev
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The real problem is that DJ's don't have... (Score:4, Interesting)
Realize, at least in the U.S. that something like 80%-90% of albums rights are held by four conglomerate corporations. Likewise, probably about 80%-90% of radio stations are owned by 4-5 major conglomerates.
DJ's are thousands of independent joe-average people, many working part time on the side.
> We have to buy the albums but are never given a license. We have albums stolen, broken, etc. at a much higher rate. But have to replace said albums at the full price (even though we already have a license).
> We have to pay performance licensing for the right to play songs in public. (FYI, weddings are a private event and different rules apply.)
> We receive few guarantees and protections. While a specific grant in the DCMA allows for radio stations to make ephereal recordings. DJ's are not given that protection. For one simple reason...they didn't have a mega-association with millions of dollars to lobby (bribe) Congress. Yes there are some DJ associations, but the industry doesn't really lend itself to such a conglomerate as labels & radio does.
> Advantage of digital recordings. Our masters are safe from theft. Instead of having to lug 4 80lb suitcases of CDs to bring all our stock. We can lug one 5 lbs external hard drive.
It's disgusting...
Oh, by the way, if you are a musical artist and you want me to respect your copyrights. Get the law changed to protect DJs and web radio.
Cause I quit recognizing your copyrights as soon as the laws stopped. If your an artist...don't gripe to me about the violation of your rights. Cause us DJs have had our rights violated repeatedly.
Copyright is a two way system. If you want it honored, you have to honor the users as well. If you're going to claim people are only buying a "license". Then give them a real license and let them register their license. Otherwise, more and more people are going to cease recognizing your copyrights.
I no longer do. Anyone who wants copies of any of my CDs are welcome to make them. I've got a burner in the basement. Having lost several hundred dollars to copyright law abuse, I've cease recognizing your right. While you may have the law on your side.
Most people don't care about legality, rather, they care about right & wrong. (There are plenty of laws on the books that are 'legal' but far from moral.) And most people only feel a moral contractual obligation to another party if that party is acting in good faith. (Which the conglomerate copyright holders are NOT doing.)
The ones that need to change the system are the artists!
Down under done under? (Score:2)
My wife and I had vaguely looked into relocating to Australia, as it seemed to embody a lot of what the US was once proud to stand for. From all the news we've been hearing from there, though, it seems like they're following the bad example we're setting. Am I misreading things, or is Australia really rushing to become another nanny state of infinite laws?
Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Funny)
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It's ridiculous that I have to buy the same song multiple times (first cassette, then CD, now Itunes download) just because I switch formats.
Either that or "greed" on the part of money-hungry companies desiring to sel
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just say no.
it may be hard (or risky) but by ALLOWING yourselves to be abused, you will continue to be reamed again and again.
simply don't follow this. are they going to arrest all dj's? will this make the music business MORE endearing to the general population?
call their bluff. don't follow this. rebel.
you must.
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Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always thought the music industry should have to pick. Either they can sell you a physical media with which you can do whatever you want (public performances or personal use) or sell you a license to use the music in a certain way (private use only, but you have the right to the music in any format you want for that purpose).
Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
They should also have to choose between legal and technological protection. If they want to use DRM to enforce policies that aren't based in copyright law (and there's no way for a piece of software to distinguish what's legal fair use), then I see no reason to grant them copyright protection. The purpose of copyright is to promote creation and enrich society. Fair use is a necessary part of that, as is the ability to use the work after the copyright period expires. They should not be allowed to renege on half of the bargain and expect the other half to continue to hold.
If they want DRM, fine. But pick one. They shouldn't be allowed to lock up our culture and expect legal assistance in doing so.
Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
To extend your analogy: suppose you own property next to mine and I have legal right-of-way. Now, you're not allowed to build a gate and not give me the key, since I have the right to pass over your property to mine. That is what DRM is trying to do: they 'guard' their property in a way that also blocks my legal rights (ie fair use copying, distribution after copyright ends).
MafiAA Sez... (Score:2)
Having to pay for the "right" to make a backup of something they send out on flawed, easily destroyed media? Uhm... no. Consumers have the right to protect their own investment from destruction.
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Which country are you speaking for - Australia? That's certainly untrue anywhere I've heard the law described.
Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
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The same goes for live music, on which royalties are payable too.
The way this is done is by fixed fee. The royalties agency determining what songs generally statistically get played and divides the revenue.
Of course that mean that lesser known artists get nothing and 90% of royalties paid goes to 10% of the artists. Nice.
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So the smaller artists get a slightly bigger chunk than you'd have thought even if they sell only 1000 records, but get played out reguarly.
But yeah - the big ones get far too much play and a far bigger chunk unfortunately
Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
DJ are probably the single largest consumers of Music. I probably spent an average of £20 per week on vinyl alone, and this was then average 12 inch single cost £5. I have not bought any in years so do not know how much it costs now, I would imagine it has certainly gone up a bit. Without buying that much new music DJing becomes too dull. I managed to keep it up for a year or two never getting any money back as I was not famous (or that good) but then gave up.
Over that time I amassed quite a large volume of records that form a pile 1 metre deep. My friends often asked me how much they thought I had spent, and on the odd occasion someone would estimate how many records I had and work it out. At that point I usually stopped paying attention in case I had a heard attack.
I suppose the point I am trying to make is that very few DJ's actually make a profit from DJing. It is a hobby, or a loss leader that leads a small minority into a music career producing albums of their own. Even people who make it big and actually get signed to a label to produce their own music usually do it for the love or to keep up their image in clubland so they can sell their own music.
The people who really be hit by this are aspiring DJ's who need to produce mixtapes in order to get any sort of gig. They then hand the mix tapes out for free as a marketing tool and 90% of them go straight in the bin. Are they also expecting these people who are usually young and skint anyway to cough up £500. The irony is that the main people they intend to listen to the tapes / mp3s are the very same record executives and talent scouts who are lining their pocket with the fee the DJ paid to produce them.
If you want to turn your hobby into a career you are better of playing with computers or going outside and playing football, now thats where the real money is. Let the music industry choke to death through lack of new talent then we can reinvent it afterwards when all these stupid laws have been repealed. If you want to listen to music in the meantime, go to your local venue that has a jam session for the evening, maybe even try and take part yourself.
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Also most of the time a DJ get's less than $250.00 a night, they cant make enough to cover the fees if they worked every friday and saturday night.
Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Informative)
A DJ, as part of spinning songs for a crowd, is already paying royalties to ARIA for the right to play those songs in public. I want you to explain to me exactly why he should be required to pay additional royalties on top of what he is already paying for the right to play those songs out of a laptop or off a compilation CD instead of the original CD.
Bear in mind that copyright does not make it illegal to copy *any* music. It only makes it illegal to copy to music that you do not have a license to copy. DJs have that license because they pay royalties.
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Music industry - Check
Brainstorming meeting at Music Industry meeting - Check
Pathetic way to screw more money out of music-playing customers in the guise of a 'benefit' - Check
There's nothing wrong with your logic - you are just incorrect in assuming that logic and common sense applies at the corporate level of the music sector.
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Having to carry around trunks full of CDs, and having to flick through them manually to find the song you want is a huge pain in the backside. Also having to keep popping them in and out of the players is a pain... You have to carry a large selection, because listeners will request songs to be played, and you have no control over what they might want to hear.
The idea of taking a large hard drive containing thousands of songs that can be electron
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Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
You also failed to answer the question I specifically asked. Tell me why, in a fair and just world, should ARIA be allowed to charge extra for the convenience of format shifting when no sales are lost and no person hears the music except the DJ who purchased it and his audience who are covered by the peformance royalty that the DJ is paying. No copyright holder is in any way harmed by allowing DJs for format shift. Charging DJs an extra royalty harms the DJs by forcing them to haul their entire physical CD collection to gigs (and risk them getting lost, stolen, or damaged) instead of a hard drive or compilation CDs.
Your argument seems to be based on the "letter of the law." Tell me why that law should be interpreted in that way instead of in a way that allows DJs more convenience without harming copyright holders in any way.
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Dude, in a fair and just world there wouldn't be copyright, period. If you frequent this site, you've probably seen me rant about this before.
We're not having a discussion about how great the world would be without copyright, we're having a discussion about what ARIA is doing in the real world.
In the real world the license granted by a copyright owner can be as strict or as lax as they like. It can authorize the public performance of a work but not the time shifting of a work. It can say that you're
Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
I do agree, however, that copyright law should be significantly overhauled. For starters, durations should be shortened (20 years or less), and copyright ownership should not be transferable.
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I fI create a compilation CD and sell that does that count as making money?
What if I am a DJ, and the format you distribute your work under isn't compatible with my systems, So I change your copy to MP6 so that it plays better on my system, is this a change? While I am getting paid for your music if we remove your music I am still getting paid.
define distribute as well. is listening to music out loud at a park considered distribution? The music indust
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Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, copyrights need to expire to encourage people to keep creating new works all the time rather than being able to sit back and cash in on one work for the rest of their lives. Copyright expiration benefits society by allowing timeless works that have become part of our culture (i.e. anything that people still remember 20 years later) to enter the public domain.
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Well the exact quote would be "should be allowed," not "has a right," but that's all semantics. I'm not a lawyer or debate major so I'm not used to having to phrase everything precisely lest my words be twisted so bear with me a bit. I do mean a temporary granted monopoly, not an unalienable right. I hope you'll see that I'm trying to argue t
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So you are right, but you are wrong if you are in their twisted world.
You say:
"No copyright holder is in any way harmed by allowing DJs for format shift."
Right, but not in their world. In their world a copyright holder is harmed because if he wasn't allowed to format shift legally, they could charge him more for doing so and so they are harmed by the format shifting. I say if we go this far, bring back legal payola. Give the DJ's back some of the po
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Their license to copy ends when it involves other people. As they were given a license to distribute aurally the music in question, then does it matter whether or not the exact, same, identical bits of data came from one CD or another? Heck, if you never saw the CD that the DJ used, how do
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A BACKUP for COMMERCIAL USE? I don't think there -IS- such a thing. A backup is a backup, a copy of some data that you have a license to do something with. In case your working copy of that data is destroyed, you still have the data to exercise your purchased rights with. The backup isn't for commercial use, the license that you have to DISTRIBUTE (by playing
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Re:No "fair use" in Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
To run a computer-program, for example, you MUST copy the bits from CD-rom to hard-disc, from hard-disc to RAM, from RAM to CPU, some parts of the program end up in CPU-cache. Parts of the artwork end up in RAM on the graphics-card. Temporary copies exist as electrical signals traveling towards screen and speakers, as soundwaves in the air and as photons of various frequencies between your screen and your eyes.
Similarily, just listening to a CD creates (more or less temporary) copies in wires, buffers, DACs and assorted cabling.
Even just reading a book creates short-lived copies. There's a continous stream of photons containing the page you're on traveling outwards in all directions from the page. Fragments of the work will stick more or less permanently in various neural structures in your head and so on.
Nevertheless, doing these things are not equivalent, in a practical sense, to COPYING the work. Rather they are nessecary and natural consequences of USING the work in the ordinary way.
As I said, in sane copyright-law, such copies are explicitly allowed. In Norway, for example, copying a CD to a different format like a mp3-player, or to a backup-tape is explicitly allowed.
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There is also a "format shifting" making it legal to rip a cd and place the music on your portable player.
The problem with these exceptions are that they are for non commercial uses. it is fine for YOU as a citizen to do it for yourself but not as a PUBLIC performance which has always been a separate part of the law. If you are getting paid to do it in public you have always been required to pay a
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I'm not certain that format shifting is formally recognised as a legitimate exception to the copyright law (maybe it is, I don't know) but even if it isn't nobody is going to be jailed for that, just as nobody was jailed for using their VCR to record Neighbours.
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For almost every case, Copyright in Australia is worse for the consumer than it is in the US. Almost. [quantumg.net]
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They go after the big fish: the ones which cause actual damage.
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From TFA:
From the FAQ on the ARIA website [aria.com.au]:
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This licensing is aimed at DJ's copying stuff off their ipods and using it for PUBLIC PERFORMANCES. if this was just making backups of stuff they already had a license for to play publicly or for personal use, then you might actually have a point.
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oops (Score:2)
However, the DJ must have either permission from the rights holder to use the original material in the first place, or the right to do so by law. ARIA's case seems pretty contrived.
I wonder what ARIA's position in on music purchased in digital format that doesn't involve an original physical copy.
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If I got this right, the DJ has to buy, and pay royalties towards music purchased in format X, and potentially the venue also must pay royalties. So music X is bought and paid for, correct?
Now if the DJ decided to shift X into Y he must pay AGAIN, noticing that X was already completely paid up and legit.
I don't see where this is different from me doing the same, even if my use is not commercial. The main similarity, o
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I was about to say a similar thing and noticed your comment. A lot of DJ's now use laptops/ipods meaning they can now use music sourced from anywhere and I guess the record companies are seeing potential revenue streams going down the drain, not to mention the fact that a couple of torrent downloads could provide a DJ with several days worth of digital music for free.
nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Format shifting is not a public performance. Therefore, it should be covered under standard copyright law and not require separate licensing.
Public performance of the music can, of course, be subject to licensing fees. But the recording industry shouldn't be able to set licensing fees based on which media or equipment the DJ happens to use.
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That comes under License Extensions for Time Delta Shifting, Recursive Shifting and Spanish Inquisition Sketch Shifting, all of which must be paid for individually. Remember, every time you scratch a record without paying, an angel gets its wings and legs ripped off.
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Most nightclub owners will tell law-enforcement or ARIA's solicitors, with a completely straight face, that there is no illegal activity inside their clubs.
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* NOTE - Artists were completely robbed on web radio royalty. RIAA was granted by Congress a card of opportunity to steal all the royalties of artists. Artists were never given the right to negotiate. Soundexchange collects royalties from all the web radio