Article in Sunday's Oregonian.
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/stories/index.ssf?/base/living/1179024905994 70.xml&coll=7

How will this affect local programmers? I know what I read in the newspaper, but how do y'all think about the rate increases and how it will affect internet only stations and those that are simulcasts of AM and FM stations?
Will it affect stations that are news and talk formatted, such as KEX, KPOJ, KGO?
Or only those that play music?

First of all - this will affect news/talk stations if they play any copyrighted music (e.g. bumpers). Many have found ways to block it from their streams.

As for the decision - like the article said, it's the mom-and-pops and hobbyists that will be most affected by this. The corporate stations will go on as if nothing happened.

Please. Please don't forget the songwriters out there. Talented folks that write the music & lyrics that enable them to buy bread & butter from the royalties they have earned. ASCAP, BMI, Songriters guild and other companies that look out for the songwriter are there to make sure that they get what they deserve. Remember, it's show BUSINESS. Don't begrudge the folks that make it all possible.

Check the facts Tommy - http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/030207/index.shtml Most web stations will be forced to cease broadcasting and there will be no revenues to share, especially for independent artists. This ruling only has to do with Sound Exchange as webcasters already pay royalties to ASCAP and BMI. Bottom line is webcasting is being singled out... terrestrial radio has never paid and satellite pays 7.5% of revenue.

The fact of the matter is lyricists and composers have lost literally thousands of dollars to all manner of illegal duplication of thier copyrighted materials. It’s time, before it gets so out of control that there will be no payments to them at all, to nip this problem in the bud. All business has expenses, and all hobbies do too. If you can’t afford your hobby, you find something else to keep you from playing with your toes. If you can’t stay in business, you go out of business, or sell and try something else. I’ll always ALWAYS, no matter what the argument, stand up for the creative people, and stand up for them to collect the monies they worked for, and therefore deserve.

You think pay per play and a $500 minimum is going to get more money to the artists and the
performers?
If i get a bill for $10,000 starting July 15, retroactive to 2006, you think i can come up with that?
Nope, most hobby broadcasters will just shut down our legal broadcast and go broadcast to just a few friends who will know where my stream is!
It won't be from Live 365 after May 15.
My songs are paid for and downloaded legally, and broadcast according to the riaa and Live 365 rules.
We have always played by the rules. And now they want a $500 per station per year minimum, plus cash for each song played?
Sorry, it's a step backward from riaa.

Webcasting has nothing to do with people making all sorts of copies.

Truth is, unless you are a major artist, webcasters are vital to your interests. These people, combined with Internet direct marketing, promotion and distribution means, are a growing alternative to the establishment distribution and royalty system.

A growing number of artists are releasing their works under Creative Commons, direct download to fans, giving permission to smaller webcasters, etc...

A significant chunk of them are gonna be directly harmed by this whole affair.

These webcasting moves are aimed directly at keeping competition low and preserving the status quo for broadcasters, none of whom will be very worried about the additional fees. They will just pass them on.

I listen to two stations here in PDX. I listen to a lot of Internet streaming sites. Why? Because they play artists that are not on the national playlists and many of them add significant value over and above the "more music, less talk, let's just shuffle the top 100 and hope you buy" value proposition found on nearly all of the music radio dial.

Guess what I buy?

That's right. CD's, unencumbered downloads, etc... I spend plenty too, but I spend it with the artist direct, if possible. That way I know my dollars are paying for creative works, not attorneys that limit my options. I'm on mailing lists for artists who are interested in attracting me as a direct consumer, I get recommendations from some of my favorite webcasters and interested others.

This niche needs to survive and grow for all of our greater good. Without the competition it provides, we lose out. Look at the FM dial these days, for a nice look at that kind of loss.

No thanks.

So, which creative people are you standing up for?

Again, webcasting has nothing to do with copies. You can thank the majors for that.

Had they listened to the folks that started Napster and moved 40 million users to a subscription or pay by the track download system then, before P2P really hit the scene, we would be looking at a completely different online experience where finding and paying for music we like is easy, reliable and robust.

The desire to limit competition and continue to establish control over people, after too many people learned about it, essentially sparked the P2P scene as it exists today.

That same ideology, flawed as it may be, is in play right now with this webcasting affair.

It's gonna have the same results too.

Instead of cultivating a robust American webcasting scene that could easily be leveraged, as Napster could have been leveraged, we will see most of these efforts move off shore and where will everybody be then?

> Webcasting has nothing to do with people making all
> sorts of copies.

Thank you. This is not a new issue; people were talking about loss of royalties 25+ years ago because people were making tape copies of their friends' records and tapes. Music piracy in third world countries has been an ongoing problem for many years, and I would not be surprised to see that alone accounting for tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in lost royalties yearly. I don't understand why streaming broadcasters should be punished for other people's criminal activity.

Here's the reason:

The major recording companies and broadcast firms are losing money to the electronic media. They want their profits, so they're willing to kill the little internet web-broadcaster so that the big company streams are all that is left.

And they will fail at it, as there are tons of ways around it.

Look at it this way, original KISN-91 airchecks are being rebroadcasted on live365 and have been for nearly 5 years now. A surprising number of people keep tuning in, listening to old static-filled tracks and jocks. Heck, a number have voted it as their most fav live365 station.

The station cost around $150 a year to operate (a dirt-cheap station) and a hunk of that changes go to royalty payments. I make next to ZERO from this station.

That royalty payment is ALREADY higher than terrestrial radio's. Now they want to raise it further multifold.

Once this new rate goes into effect, KISN will get killed again.

Tommy Vance, the musicians, who now get a little from this station, will now get ZERO. How does this help?

Someday, we might not be together again.

Look, I’m not trying to kill anything. All I’m saying is pay for what you use, and pay the going rate. When you go to Freddie’s to grocery shop, and fill up your cart, you pay for what you have in the cart. When you go to the service station, you pay for what you use. You don’t go into these or any other establishments and not pay for what you use! You also don’t haggle with the folks at your favorite restaurant for the price you’re going to pay. It’s right there on the menu. Pay it, or leave and go somewhere else. If you can’t afford to pay the fees to have your on line radio station, then move onto something else. IF you can, then be happy that you’re complying with the law, and helping care and feed the people that created what you’re buying…the music.

Tommy, have you ever either run or listened to an internet-only broadcast?

CJ,

No, I have not run an internet-only broadcast. I have listened to a few.

News programs can use up to 1 minutes of audio from any song incidentally as part of a story without paying royalties.

thats what scott simon said on NPR this morning as he was interviewing Pink Martini anyway.

" Pay the going rate " is a good concept. I would agree with that.

Do you think that everyone that has an internet stream should pay the same rate as everyone else? Or should there be exceptions for anyone?

Also, what's your take on the attempt to collect royalties retroactively through 2006?

And lastly, " the going rate " is all that's being fought here. Not the fact that artists should be paid. The increase is too big, too fast and will instantly close the majority of stations - PURELY because of the inability to pay the increase. It's not some empty threat. It's that it is unreasonable. The powers that be know it, and are fine with it. I'm not.

I've read many articles on the subject, and this is the one that made the most sense to me:

http://www.dwt.com/practc/broadcast/bulletins/08-06_InternetRadio.htm

It covers all the questions asked above, and then some. FYI: I believe the “retro” fees are a bunch of crap-ola

"The major recording companies and broadcast firms are losing money to the electronic media."

Yep. Will fail horribly.

I wrote this in 2001:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/174096756/m/544098989?r=17809 6999#178096999

The entire thread is worth a read. Essentially, the dynamics have changed and the burden is on the traditional media companies to adapt, or suffer more intense competition. That thread is in the context of Napster, prior to the P2P explosion that resulted from it getting shut down. The specifics are not relevant today, but the cycle of adaptation that happened is. That's the new dynamic everybody involved with traditional media is struggling with.

It's not their show any more.

This late in the game, the cat is outta the bag and it's gonna stay there, barring some pretty draconian legislation.

(and that's being tried each and every year)

The majority of artists, particularly those up and coming ones, have an interest in electronic media forms not only continuing to exist, but for them to flourish. It's gonna be how they get their own audience and that audience will get them paid.

This is about control and suppressing viable competition and business models, nothing more, nothing less.

I've got an Internet radio station, it's been on the "air" 3-4 years.

I have listeners in almost every country on the planet. I've also got listeners in just about any city you can name in the USA.

It's really amazing because, since your listeners have to register in order to listen, you can track their listening habits very accuratly. Much better than estimates from ARB, based on a diary.

I can see exactly which songs my listeners tune out on, so it's a great music research tool.

Still, I don't make a dime. In fact I pay to keep my station on.

Since I often play new music, I find it amazing that the regulators of music think shutting my station down, and thousands of others like it, will help their cause. Or, even their profit!

I'm just a music programmer who knows how to use the Internet for broadcasting, how am I a threat? I thought I was on THEIR side? That's the way the record industry treated me when I programmed music on FM.

You are a threat because:

-you get to call the shots

-your listener data is yours and yours alone

-the tunes you play, may or may not be well aligned with the mega label business model

-the artists can deal with you directly

-listeners can deal directly with the artists.

All of these things combined beg the serious question: "Why do we have these middle people again?"

That's the threat, in that every listener, who chooses to listen to your station, or others like it, will grok that there is more choice out there than they are used to getting to choose from.

Given this potential for choice, people will then begin to choose. In order to differentiate your station from the others, you are gonna serve a niche of some kind. This is what everybody does.

The more niches served by Internet stations, the fewer potential listeners in aggragate then exist for the majors to pull from, and play ads to.

At the top of the chain, more choice means a less focused music offering as a whole. Having to support more artists, with less overall return per artist, means essentially fewer dollars.

Additionally, having venues where pretty much *any* music could be played, opens up this pool of potential listeners to music markets, labels, genres and such that lie outside the corporate stronghold, thus further diminishing potential profit through increased competition.

Said competition can come from other labels, artists choosing to market directly to those who appreciate their work, back catalog out of print stuff that's hard to obtain, support, etc...

It's far easier for everybody involved if we just stick to the majors, accept the fairly narrow focus and scope of choice we are given and just pay as much as we can for that to maximize returns.

*Nobody wants to accept a landscape where potential attention can be literally anywhere, new sounds can get popular without being signed, approved, vetted, etc... and money flows directly from artist to listener, maybe taking a quick detour via some Internet broadcasters.

*Nobody really means the major movers and shakers seeing their longer term profit and relevance being seriously challenged.

In the very long term, it may be possible that whole genres exist on venues and delivery systems that do not involve the majors at all! This leaves them to back catalog status and a more aggressive market for their hits to play in. Could mean collapse of their business model!

And that's the whole point of it!

My take is that " they " don't care who comes along - as long as they pay. But I am betting that " they " won't pay. They'll get a side-deal that will be less than me.

I don't like that because it is unfair.

Wha.

In the meanwhile, I will fight it. Stop me.

Under the catagory of bigger picture legislative efforts:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070516-cable-lobby-group-gutting-the-fcc- would-be-better-for-everyone.html

Essentially the major content carriers are saying, "just let us handle it."

And you think these folks are gonna continue to encourage competition of the kind detailed here?

Yamhill County's Classic Rock station:
http://www.streamwebtown.com/macradiofm

Without getting too far off topic, I'm curious, are there are any Internet radio stations with a "Full Service" format? I would really like to hear how such a format would sound with contemporary music.

my guess is that "they" are trying to head off direct competetion from internet stations once wi-fi becomes an in car option.

"Author: Jessinw
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 5:46 pm Top of pageBottom of page Link to this message

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Yamhill County's Classic Rock station:
http://www.streamwebtown.com/macradiofm"

welcome back vern?

Check this station:
Home Town Radio
http://www.htradio.net/