Radio's Tangled Web
April 30, 2007 - As you read these words on your monitor, there is a decent chance that you’re also streaming a little online radio. After all, with an estimated listenership of approximately 50 million Americans per month, Internet radio has become a go-to destination for a fuller spectrum of music, an alternative to FM’s mind-numbing monotony. And if you are one of those listeners, mark May 15 on your calendar: it might well be the day that the music dies.
The RIAA NAZIs are at it again. I reported a story on this a few months ago. Well, it looks like they are going to go and turn the music off. The average person running a web station will not be able to pay the HUGE fees that are being leved aginst them. A lot of people just stream music on the internet from their houses and if this happens, This will block many people from music that they would have never have listened to otherwise.
"Last month the trio of Library of Congress judges that oversees copyright law’s statutory licenses decided that May 15 will be the date royalty fees owed by Web radio operators will be recalibrated. The Copyright Royalty Board changed rates from a percentage of revenue to a per-song, per-listener fee—effectively hiking the rates between 300 and 1,200 percent, according to a lawyer representing a group of Webcasters. "If this rate does not change, it will wipe out the vast majority of Web radio," Tim Westergren, founder of the music discovery service Pandora, tells NEWSWEEK. "If this stays, we’re done. Back to the stone age again." (Royalty Board Chief Justice James Sledge declined to comment on the case, which lawyers say they intend to appeal.)
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