New Streaming Royalty Rates To Threaten the Existence of All Streamed Music.

[bliss]

http://www.di.fm/blog/read/2007/03/new-music-royalty-rates-are-about-to.html

Since the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board recently made a determination of the royalty rates Internet Radio webcasters must pay, more and more webcasters are saying they will not be able to continue streaming unless something is urgently done.

http://www.djlosch.com/article_Why_Internet_Radio_is_in_the_Emergency_Room

Would love to get some help with this. It is kind of scary what they are tring to do. In effect it will make places that play music pay ever increasing (yearly increases of 35%+) royalties to some non-Profit that will only give the money to the Artist if they ask for it.

With the new internet radio law, streaming audio from your own home to your own laptop would require one of these new internet radio licenses (at $500 to start).

So, do you think this will include video games that has music incorperated into the games? Will you have to pay to have that "theme" music streamed form your PS3 to the internet and interconnected with your friends playing on online server.

Well, yeah a bit exteme, but that is what they want to do. Impose heavy tax's on any streamed music.


Help out -> http://savenetradio.org/


*This is not an advertisment, this is something I just read online and since I am a avid listener of di.fm I thought to post on different forums to get help and the word out about what they are going to do.

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[Chicken]

Who does this affect, just americans?

 

[labrocca]

Who does this affect, just americans?

It would effect American companies and citizens that stream. Personally I don't see the problem. Radio already pays royalties...why should internet radio be allowed to stream music for free?

 

[franchise]

It would effect American companies and citizens that stream. Personally I don't see the problem. Radio already pays royalties...why should internet radio be allowed to stream music for free?

I believe the issue is the royalty rate setup. I think they are trying to lump internet radio stations at the highest bracket of royalty payment and also per year fees...it's overkill for streaming music that doesn't have advertisers and such to cover the costs like a traditional radio station would. In essense a small internet underground station wouldn't be able to make it.

I don't know all the details...this is just what I picked up from some news stories etc.

It's a worthy topic..but I think they already have voted on this. I believe it's scheduled to go to appeals..but it's not looking good for small internet radio.

 

[commes]

Well if all go's through like tehy want it to, quite a bit of internet radio stations i believe will be going offline for good.

 

[bliss]

it's overkill for streaming music that doesn't have advertisers and such to cover the costs like a traditional radio station would.

Accually, they did a run down on the cost of traditional radio vs internet radio. The average cost per year per person on traditaional radio is $25. The average cost per year per person on digitially streamed music is $155. This will increase to $267 per year per listener by 2010 and traditional radio costs stay the same. They are really sticking it to the digitally stream music. What is worst is this law is retro active back to 2006. So, that means that all those online music places will owe 500k+ easily.

Yes and no. The law has not be enacted yet. It starts on May 15th. We still have time to help get the law revisied, but it will take people to help out. To speak out against it. As website owners it will affect us in a way that if we ever wanted to stream music from our sites we will have to pay these overly priced (taxed) rates to a charity that is made up of mostly RIAA officals. That pockets 50% of all money paid to them and if an Music Artist does not ask for thier money they will pocket that money too. Do they activly go around looking for the Artist to pay them? Nope, they keep the money if it is not asked for.

As webmasters we already take a lot of crap. We should help out.