Streaming Music!

[Mr. Analog]

97.4 and 103.2 Red Dragon FM

South Wales No. 1 Hit Station!



http://www.radioio.com/radioiojazz.php



Post more if ya got 'em

[Darren Dirt]

= http://www.di.fm/progressive



Great background music for the House/Trance fan who also like ProgRock !

[Darren Dirt]

Make sure to enjoy your streaming internet radio, folks.

New Music Royalty Rates May Shut Down Internet Radio
http://www.di.fm/blog/read/2007/03/new-music-royalty-rates-are-about-to.html

On Friday March 2nd, the U.S. government, through the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), made a determination of the royalty rates Internet Radio webcasters must pay the owners of sound recording copyrights to license the music they webcast for the years 2006-2010. The license is paid to SoundExchange, a nonprofit organization that collects royalty payments from digital music broadcasters and distributes them to rights holders.

The issue is that the new rates completely ignore the business and market realities of Internet Radio. In a nutshell they expect many webcasters, such as at Digitally Imported, to pay far greater money for licensing than we ever even collect from all of our services, effectively driving webcasters out of business.

For commercial and for larger non-commercial webcasters the judges set a pay-per-play rate of:


$.0008 per play for 2006
$.0011 per play for 2007
$.0014 per play for 2008
$.0018 per play for 2009
$.0019 per play for 2010
No need to adjust your glasses, you are seeing it correctly. Not only are the rates outrageous but they also continue to increase wildly every year. For example, by 2007 the rate jumps 37% from 2006!

We are talking about rates which are hundreds of % more than the revenues webcasters generate, even before any expenses for things such as wages, resources, hardware, and so on. How judges can come up with such numbers is beyond me. What we do know is that Digitally Imported was part of a collective of small commercial broadcasters which presented its arguments in court proceedings. Yet the judges completely threw virtually all of our arguments aside in making their decision.

Maybe the big corporations of the world such as Yahoo and AOL could in theory afford to loose on such rates and still provide music, but that doesn't mean all other businesses have to go as a result. Do you really want to have just a few big corporations playing the music for you in the future?

You may ask us about why don't we just play unlicensed tracks or make an agreement with artists directly to avoid paying so much. The reality of the business is that it is virtually impossible to micromanage things this way. You'd have to have a world class communication company to be able to track down so many artists or labels, find where who is, who to contact, what forms to sign, talk them into it, etc. Plus you'd be surprised just how much of the non-mainstream music you love so much here is really signed to a label. That's why in theory the law that allows for a blanket license is really convenient - it's just that the rates which were set now are truly hopeless and stifle any kind of competition. What are we supposed to do, wave a flag and and turn into a payola service? Put a banner out that says "hey, whoever pays us the most in advance gets to have his or her track heard on the radio!"? Because that's the only model that is going to work with these rates.

This All Sounds Familiar, What Happened Last Time?
If this all sounds familiar it is because it is very similar to what happened the last time around 2002 and the Day of Silence campaign. Then too very bad rates were proposed for the period up until the end of 2005. Much hype was raised because then as now the industry was about to die. You wonderful listeners wrote in droves to your congressmen whether by submitting online forms, emails, letters, or phone calls, and they in turn heard your message. With the urging of Congressmen last time, SoundExchange and the small commercial webcasters such as Digitally Imported settled on a deal (SWSA) that allowed us to pay a percentage of revenue or expenses instead of per performance, with the rates ranging around 10-12%. Even though officially the rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) last time were also bad, this negotiated deal allowed us to use another model and continue to exist. There was no such option allowed by the CRB this time, and the jury's still out on whether anything will be negotiated like it was last time.

Anonymous said...
My understanding, is that it has nothing to do with any form of licensing. All music played will incur a charge to be paid to SoundExchange, and its up to the artist to collect the royalties from SoundExchange. In theory this ruling does apply to non-US based listeners, so DI could continue to broadcast to anyone outside the US. Quite ironic.

Sounds like they are just squeezing the properly run sites like DI and encouraging the crooked underground ones that will never pay anything! It defies belief that they think this is going to work. At the moment they are getting a healthy chunk from the internet, but soon they will get nothing because they will shut down all the stations. goose and golden egg spring to mind!

How much of that money collected actually gets to an artist and how much goes to the bureaucracy of administering it and the salaries of the board of directors of this so called non profit organization?? Working with many artists myself I know the amount collected in Royalties from these third parties are so nominal if at all - that Touring is the only way the artist makes a living. The more listeners the more likely they will have more sold out shows and merch sales.


"...facts? don't bother me with facts!"
- [ insert name of politician here ]

[Tom]

Rock 97.7 (Classic Rock)
Psy Trance (LastFM GlobalTags PSY Tag)
Radio Sonic (OGG Format)
Virgin Radio (Rock)

I also have a few "Linux" related Live Radio streams I listen to when I get around to it (podcast style, but they are actually recorded and broadcast live).
As well as Magnatune, and more LastFM streams.

[Bixby]

I really like this site. There is some not very good music, lots of good music, and some truly great music.... all largely undiscovered awaiting to be discovered.

I have downloaded a number of songs from this site (free of charge) and a number of songs have led me to purchase a CD I would not have otherwise bought. Search a geographic area, search by genre, search by song name, search by band name, search by sounds like....

http://www.garageband.com/

Enjoy...
...Bix

[Mr. Analog]

I really like this site. There is some not very good music, lots of good music, and some truly great music.... all largely undiscovered awaiting to be discovered.

I have downloaded a number of songs from this site (free of charge) and a number of songs have led me to purchase a CD I would not have otherwise bought. Search a geographic area, search by genre, search by song name, search by band name, search by sounds like....

http://www.garageband.com/

Enjoy...
...Bix

Great link Bix, very cool stuff!