JoWie Posted March 14, 2007 Report Posted March 14, 2007 ~ $150,000 a year for stations with 1000 listeners. http://www.save-internet-radio.com/2007/03...internet-radio/Save Internet Radio If the RIAA and SoundExchange get their way, independent webcasting / Internet radio will soon cease to exist. Why? Earlier today, the Copyright Royalty Board, the group overseeing statutory licensing for US-based internet radio stations, announced the new royalty rates for streaming radio performance rights. The board rejected the arguments made by webcasters and instead chose to adopt the proposal put forth by industry-backed SoundExchange, a royalty fee collection agency created by the RIAA. The new rates are based on “performances” of songs. A “performance” is defined as one song being streamed to a single listener. In other words, a station with 1000 listeners is charged for 1000 performances of each song it broadcasts. Further, the new rates, just announced today, are retroactive to 2006, and increase rapidly each year. The rates per performance are as follows: $0.0008 in 2006$0.0011 in 2007$0.0014 in 2008$0.0018 in 2009 At first glance, those seem like fairly small numbers: eight ten-thousandths of a dollar, eleven ten-thousandths of a dollar, and so on. When you actually do the math, however, you see the truth revealed. The average radio station plays 16 songs in an hour. Under this system, that would be equivalent to 16 performances. 0.0011 x 16 = 0.0176 Still a fairly small number - under two cents. But now assume this station has 1000 listeners. That means that, in one hour, the station would be billed for 16,000 performances. 0.0011 x 16000 = 17.60 That’s $17.60 an hour. Now we’re starting to see how expensive this truly is. Multiply that by 24 hours a day. 17.60 * 24 = 422.40 $422.40 a day. But there’s 365 days in a year. 422.40 * 365 = 154176 $154,176 for the year in performance royalties alone for a station with 1000 listeners. And that’s just for 2007: it gets even worse. In 2008, the cost rises to $193,536 for the year. In 2009, it goes up to $248,832. Even for a much smaller station, the royalties owed are huge. Of course, these figures don’t include the other set of rights that Internet radio stations are required to purchase, which must be licensed separately from an agency like SESAC or ASCAP, or the cost of bandwidth and server capacity. When you add all these costs together, you can easily see why nobody, save perhaps a megacorporation like AOL or Yahoo, could afford to pay these rates. But wait - what’s this? The new rates apply retroactively to the beginning of 2006. In other words, someone who has been happily (and legally) running their small internet radio station for the past few years is suddenly going to be hit with possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional royalties owed. These bills could easily cause a small, independent broadcaster (and his family) to go bankrupt. Meanwhile, over-the-air radio stations are still not required to pay one dime to the record industry for public performance rights from SoundExchange or an equivalent group. They only need to pay the far more reasonable fees of BMI, ASCAP, and/or SESAC. This reads like another tactic by the recording industry and corporate powers to exert control over anyone involved with music and an attempt to destroy independent broadcasting. Whether you don’t want to see your favorite internet radio station go off the air, whether you just hate the RIAA, whatever the reason: please, help us get this senseless, greedy policy designed to do nothing but line the pockets of the record industry overturned. Write to, or better yet call, your representative, your senators, and the Copyright Royalty Board. Tell your friends and family, write on your blog, digg this - help get the word out and help to Save Internet Radio! If you are a webcaster, we want to hear from you! How will this affect your station? What do you plan on doing? Drop us a line at feedback@save-internet-radio.com. If you’re someone involved with setting these rates, you’re also welcome to contact us and explain why you think these rates are fair. We’ll be updating this site with more information as this progresses, so please check back and get involved!
Greased_Lightning Posted March 14, 2007 Report Posted March 14, 2007 I don't listen to web radio but if this is true then someone needs to 'take care of' the RIAA, even more than they already need 'taking care of'. That's bull!@#$%^&* that internet radio would be charged so much more than a standard station. I don't know how it is at large radio stations, but at those around here, they don't even have to keep track of what they play and how many times. RIAA must stand for something like Re!@#$%^&*ed... Incestuous... !@#$%^&*holes of America.
rootbear75 Posted March 14, 2007 Report Posted March 14, 2007 thats the problem... when music radio came around... the government and the RIAA couldn't do anything without being !@#$%^&*ed up by the radio stationsthis changed when Internet Radio started coming around... they saw they could rape small time broadcasters... and they have started to. The only problem w/ this is that Internet radio costs virtually little to do.. so it makes it good for those people who do broadcasting as a hobby. Standard radio costs a couple of million dollars to get the equipment, rent your Freq. license from the FCC, etc...
Aileron Posted March 15, 2007 Report Posted March 15, 2007 You act as if there is some kind of malice here. There actually isn't. What's causing this is a combination of the government's desire to get "the best of the best" and their lack of need to compete with anything. The fact that government agencies do not have to compete causes great innefficiency in all of their processes. There is no bar to which agencies' production is measured. In this case there is the FIAA, and we have no idea if another agency would have come up with another plan that would be better for everyone. There desire to get the best of the best actually hurts them. In this case, the government got the lawyers who graduated from college with the highest marks. In the last case about that stupid 4' 9" rule, they got the statisticans who had the highest marks in college. That's great, but such people have a tendency to live in their own world. Their goals in life are typically to eventually go back to college, get a PhD, and get a professor position. Your typical government agency is filled with a bunch of young people who are very smart in terms of their field, but very stupid as to what actually goes on in the real world. I was talking to my father about the 4' 9" recommendation, and he pointed out something that I had overlooked. I ask the moderator for forgiveness about my off-topicness, but it is only to show what is happening here. [moderator notice: off-topicness forgiven] The 4' 9" recommendation will likely be used by insurance companies to screw accident victims out of their money. There are probably several companies who already consider having children shorter than this height without a booster seat an act of negligence. Take a hypothetical example: A drunk driver in a truck hits a car driven by a mothery with her 16 year old 4' 7" daughter in the passenger seat. Both the mother and her daughter were wearing their safety belts and the mother was obeying all traffic laws. The drunk driver slams into the passenger side door, causing moderate damage to the vehicles and seriously injuring the passenger. Without that recommendation, the insurance company of the drunk driver would have to pay the costs of the vehicles and the health costs. However, with the recommendation, the insurance company has a legal case that the mother was 'negligent' because her daughter wasn't in a booster seat and would not be liable to pay the health costs. Now, my point is that the agency who released that recommendation weren't trying to screw families over. Nor were they catering to insurance companies (in this case). What happened here is that they had a bunch of overeducated statisticians and mathematicians who have little experience in the real world who don't live on planet Earth but rather in Mathmagicland. These people simply can't see the consequences of their actions in the real world. To them car accidents and insurance companies are objects in a foreign land that do not have a consequence on the math problem in front of them. Now, back to the topic of internet radio. I conjecture to similar to the aformentioned statisticians, the FIAA lawyers also live in their own world. To them, real-world practicality is an irrelevant concern. It simply does not occur to them that they are screwing small-time broadcasters or the entire industry for that matter. They see no need to compromise or create an agency that for instance could pool the resources of these small time broadcasters to pay the royalties. All the FIAA sees is technical legality. They see a legal problem, they solve it. The real world doesn't concern them.
11___________ Posted March 16, 2007 Report Posted March 16, 2007 Still i dont think anyone caught on...isnt satillite radio 10 bucks a month, for any songs, artists? correct or add to me if u want.
Nokia Posted March 17, 2007 Report Posted March 17, 2007 Still i dont think anyone caught on...isnt satillite radio 10 bucks a month, for any songs, artists? correct or add to me if u want. i get free satellite radio, never use it but its there. on DVB satellites, they stream out a few 100 digital radio channels per sat. some good, most bad. not like sirius or XM where its made into a nice little product/package thing but its still there. i know a guy who listens to the radio on it but i personally can't be bothered
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