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Net radio battles royalty ruling with silence

DAVID GEORGE-COSH

Globe and Mail Update

Latest comment posted at 5:17 PM EDT 25/06/07

Stations across North America are going off the air or will play series of public service announcements to fight decision that raises royalty payments by 300 to 1,200 per cent ...Read the full article

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  1. Jeepster Forever from Toronto, Canada writes: If you're playing the music so that you make money then you must pay the piper. Quit whining about what the owners of the content 'make' you pay. If your model does not allow for this amount of royalty then perhaps there is an issue with your model - you think!
  2. Plain Jane from Toronto, Canada writes: The problem isn't with an inability to adhere to the existing royalty model - internet radio works and finds small groups new fans that they couldn't otherwise have. Internet radio is a healthy way for long-suffering musicians to get their music to a wide, enthusiastic audience, and if all they have to do is let online stations play their music for free once in a while, it's a win-win situation for all involved. Music industry greed is only going to hurt musicians in the end.
  3. Stude Ham from Outremont, Canada writes:

    Depending on which side of the fence you are this is either going to be good news (HEY! We can gouge ever more money from anyone who uses anything on which we have a cawpeewryte!) or very bad news... our favourite link bypassing regulatory agency crapola has just died.

    This music company greed knows no bounds and is killing off the ability of the world to reach out to the world.
  4. nate torola from Saint Cloud, United States writes: Great, corporate greed ruining innovation and choice with patents, licensing, price hikes to boot.

    How about a new bottom line? Take your million dollar silent radio and shuv it up your nose©

    This was a great article. I think its very unjust with the 300% pricing.
  5. Stephen Street from Orem, United States writes: There is a tendency for large corporations to monopolize any and all forms of communications. This, of course, is related to their bottom line and well as their political leanings.
    By allowing the big businesses to control and restrict competition we also limit our choices to those made by top down thinkers who have decided what you and I will hear, and see. Someone else makes you buy what they have decided you will buy. Rather Orwellian I'd say.
    Free radio allows me to decide if I even like what you have and gives me, and you, the sales pitch of alternative ideas. I like choices, lots of choices. More than that I like the idea that the little guy/gal can have a voice in the crowd which is not muffled by money.
    Those of you who want to join the Jack Booted army of corporate gray may go straight to hell with the rest of those slack jawed lawyers policing every possible venue for bloodsucking.
    As for me I will find a way to get the music, news, and information without the permission or oversight of those Unibrows who inhabit this planet.
    Vilfrado Parado got it right. In the entire world only 20% are free the rest are Lawyers.
  6. Jake Richardson from Kingston, Canada writes: A truly foolish decision. Pandora has opened up many new artists to me and resulted in direct sales of music that I likely would not have heard of otherwise. Alas, it's being killed. Big media is nervous about losing their stranglehold. The labels are still in denial about the internet and music sales. So a fine service that can directly profit the labels is being crushed for basically no good reason. It's what happens when corporations run the government by proxy through campaign contributions.
  7. M K from Canada writes: Jeepster, what is happening here is the recording industry setting the barrier to entry into the market artificially high, so this has nothing to do with market forces.

    For a long time I was anti-piracy when many people around me were downloading gleefully. Artists deserve a fair reward for their efforts and the downloading trend of the late 90s was spiralling out of control. The recording industry then lost their advocates.

    They started a campaign of legal harassment that targeted children, unabashedly milking their listeners for more money rather than embracing the technology and looking for a profit model. Then they sought to tightly control their products once we purchased them, and somehow were given that right! Now they are looking to destroy internet radio.

    I love music but I have honestly lost the will to purchase any music from a mainstream record company. Their aggressive and dismissive attitude towards their listeners betrays the very product they are trying to sell. Every single move they make is self-destructive, and I have no sympathy whatsoever for any artist that chooses to associate with these most voracious, greedy, and regressive corporations.
  8. Paul W from Mid Ontario, Canada writes: This issue has been brewing in the US for months. The real problem is that the rates charged to internet stations are to be largest charged to any brodcaster (fees paid by regular radio stations, sat companies). The operators are willing to pay they just want fair pricing so that they can compete with other brodcasters.
  9. Clark Kent from Canada writes: Yeah, internet radio broadcasters paying the highest royalties and have to pay them retroactively to the beginning of 2006?

    This is just the RIAA killing internet radio in the US.
  10. Adebisi TheGamer from Canada writes: Jeepster, I think you have no idea what the real issue is here.

    Internet radio broadcasters have always paid royalties. The royalties were set by the appropriate governing bodies and the broadcasters paid them.

    Now they want to change the law, and make it RETROACTIVE so that good, paying, radio stations that derived their entire business structure based on the rates at the time, have to suddenly find all this money that was never budgeted for in the first place.

    On top of that, the new fee structure basically means an internet radio station will have to pay about 3 times as much as a radio broadcaster and about 2 times as much as a satellite broadcaster.

    Combine that with the fact that the only logical way for a small up and coming station to start up is to use a service to catalog their play lists and listeners and submit the appropriate payments for them and manage the legal side of things in what was once a simple industry, and the effective cost of broadcasting and paying licenses will likely be 4x the cost of a traditional radio station, for the same number of listeners.

    And like I said, they want to make the entire thing retroactive. Come to my business and start calling my customers and tell them my rate retroactively went up and they owe me more money. Lets see what happens.
  11. Trillian Rand from Canada writes: It is truly unfortunate the article did not make clear the fact that internet radio stations will be paying higher rates than any other broadcaster, whether 'traditional' or satellite.

    While it may be in the best interests of the recording industry to concentrate power in the hands of several large broadcasters, this is contrary to the interest of the average listener. The copyright board and the RIAA don't seem to realize that the more difficult they make it for people to listen to music, the more they encourage illegal file sharing.

    This discriminatory action by the copyright board is a clear attempt to force internet radio out of business to the advantage of satellite and traditional broadcast empires. That the American government has to be lobbied to stop this attempted restriction of trade is disturbing.
  12. john setta from Canada writes: The only way that anything will change is if we boycott buying all CD, DVD moives, and stop going to movies, and stop going to big label concerts, then will make them stop and think.
  13. Barrie Ward from Weldon Saskatchewan, Canada writes: The end result will be the tuning in of radio elsewhere ... Can anybody remember the pirate radio that actually operated on anchored ships off the coast of the UK ....

    Not that the stupidity of the American legislation will lead to a heyday for the broadcasters of Baluchistan ..... Chuckle!
  14. Brian Fisher from Ripon QC, Canada writes: On the positive side, the American audio entertainment juggernaut will be slowed somewhat as people search out non American internet stations.
  15. Paul who is from Vancouver, Canada writes: .
    Brian Fisher from Ripon: "On the positive side, the American audio entertainment juggernaut will be slowed somewhat as people search out non American internet stations."

    BINGO

    QUOTE from article: U.S. Internet radio stations will go offline Tuesday to protest an upcoming royalty rate hike ...

    There are thousands of internet radio stations from all over the world out there.

    The Americans own SOME of them.

    By the time the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board manages to figure out that the internet isn't an American product, people will be getting used to alternative online radio broadcasts from all over the world.

    Try Publicradiofan.com for example and tune in to worldwide radio using your existing media (Media player, Real, QT, or whatever).

    http://www.publicradiofan.com/

    Find stations by name, location, format, or language.

    Here is a (very large) list of NON USA stations to choose from.

    http://www.publicradiofan.com/stationlistintl.html

    The internet's not an American product.
  16. Neil W. Humphrey from Vancouver, Canada writes: Barrie Ward from Weldon Saskatchewan, Canada - it was Radio Caroline in the 60's until they were towed & in the 70's Radio Norhtsea International then Radio Caroline showed up again. Living in the UK in the 70's it was either RC, RNI or Radio Luxenburg for the best tunes.

    Internet Radio - this news is really sad!!! Totally stupid in understanding & driven by greed. I'm sure all IR's don't mind paying a realistic royality but sounds like they are making up for the RIAA's poor marketing & product. IR's serve a great market for speciality tunes which as old as I am are Northern Soul, Euro Dance, Soul, R&B & lots of tunes you just can find on normal radio or in the shop.

    Hopefully the US will change it's mind if not the IR's can move to Canada.
  17. doctor business from vancouver, Canada writes: As an anarchist, I see this as an underhanded positive development. I think that the broadcasters are going to go underground and up to Canada. The idiotic copyright law will be enforced, but it will be a joke - just like limits on mp3 trading. This will mean better underground radio. Better CANCON and sensible canadian influence. And inevitably, a bigger fall for the big recording industry monsters that are grasping desperately at straws: "Sue Everyone!" They keep yelling but no one will be listening one day. Maybe they will take down bad corporate rock and bland corporate radio with them! We can only hope. Or maybe set it up that way. The world could use one less clearchannel.
  18. Timber Wolf from Richmond, BC, Canada writes: The music industry's attempts at commiting infantcide on inernet radio is hardly surprising. For corporate executives, market consolidation is desirable. It signifies the epitome of sloth. If successful in quelling internet radio, the music industry will go after satellite radio as well.
  19. D K from Canada writes: Yeah yesterday sucked. Thank goodness it's the world wide web and not the united states web. There are other stations to choose from.
  20. Geriatric Gardener from St Catharines, Canada writes: Is this just a thinly veiled way to force the move to satellite radio and pay per song? Remember too that the big automakers are putting satellite radio in new cars. In the end we will all pay. Big industry is just beginning to flex it's muscles......... wait until the big companies are stronger than governments. It's coming.

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