Dumbshit Dept.
SoundExchange works to kill off internet radio!
In another amazing bout of stupidity SoundExchange (which is essentially an extension of the RIAA) has squeezed the Copyright Royalty Board to increase the rates for streaming radio providers. In their greed to squeeze more money from the market, they are likely going to kill internet radio streaming, take out NPR and thus kill off this revenue stream in its entirety.
NPR is fighting back:
"…we are being required to pay an internet royalty fee that is vastly more expensive than what we pay for over-the-air use of music, although for a fraction of the over-the-air audience."
These new rates affect many popular online services like Pandora, Last.fm, Live365 and Soma.fm -- these services could be wiped out if these rules stand. Consider for instance:
In the estimate of increased fees for Pandora noted above, a $500 per channel cost is also assessed. Channels are not clearly defined, meaning that these channel-based services will need to plan for extremely high costs if they choose to continue operations. That’s going to kill services.
Social network streaming sites like last.fm can create a virtually unlimited number of streams. They're supposed to pay $500 per virtual stream? Sorry, not going to happen -- they'll have to fold and that will simply kill the revenue stream altogether!
Soma FM says:
The new fees are a staggering increase over our previous annual royalty rate of about $22,000 to over $600,000 for 2006. And the fees are even higher in 2007, based on our current listenership, they'll be over $1 million dollars for 2007! (Which is 3-4 times what we hope to raise in 2007).
That would be curtains for a traditional web caster if these rules are adopted. Is it greed or predatory market practice in order to have more control over the entire market? Perhaps the RIAA/SoundExchange simply wants to wipe out all Internet broadcasting from companies that are not wholly in the RIAA fold. That's the only thing that makes sense, because that is the overall effect that these new rules will have. Period.
What's really sad is that the RIAA friendly companies are too idiotic to bring innovative products to market. If the current cool companies go away they will be replaced by crappy RIAA supported companies who are going to overcharge their customers. Those companies will fail (like all RIAA innovations have done) and in the end the RIAA and their cronies will have far less money/control than they do now.
The more I think about it, it must be stupidity. There is no sensical way to read this development and think that this is going to be good for anyone. Not NPR, not cool net companies, not the RIAA nor the artists. For a while it looked like things might be taking a turn for the better and that things would be slowly improving. Now I'm convinced again that the RIAA and all the major labels must be completely annihilated before we can make real progress. Of course that will take many more years.
In the meantime, write your representatives/congresscritters to stop this rate hike!
Posted by Mayhem at March 20, 2007 12:55 PM
