News Internet radio stung by new royalty fees

[The_Pope]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/04...gets_new_fees/

[mmorgue]

Ludicrous... It's stints like this that will only enamour more and more people to hop onto alt.*.mp3.* to amass, plunder and pilage... Arr!

Christ, the RIAA have fuct up their business models so badly that they simply cannot come up with a realistic, logical model that meets the consumer market given the rapidly changing desire from physical media to stream/net based.

Nothing they [RIAA] can do now apart from stand back with their hands up will salvage any respect or confidence in them. Sad...

[bilbothebaggins]

... and be retroactively applied to 2006.

Interesting contracts they have, allowing for increasing fees after the fact.

[HandMadeAndroid]

~These A holes are killing art, they are the art mafia, they are a tax on creativity! Does this affect all mumu, or could an independent radio station get away with playing independent-mu?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Wonder how many of these radio stations will suddenly move to be streamed from russia...

[r4tch3t]

So does the RIAA actually benefit anyone? The artists have to put subliminal messages in their songs, the consumer gets slapped repeatedly in the face with a large fish, and the RIAA gets a fat paycheck for doing a job no one wants them to do, and the assassins wont target them as they would be taxed for listening to the music on the way to the job.
If it weren't for the bodyguards, and the Atlantic ocean between us, I would go directly to the artists and buy their album straight from them.

[mmorgue]

Originally Posted by r4tch3t

So does the RIAA actually benefit anyone? [snip] ... I would go directly to the artists and buy their album straight from them.

Pay the artists directly for their work?! Sheer madness...

[Lazarus Dark]

this is stupid. I actually listen to a couple internet radio stations on occation. they have turned me onto a couple bands that I would not have heard on the local clearchannel stations (for you guys across the pond, Clear Channel owns half of all US radio stations now and has made them all play the exact same songs.) I then bought cd's from those bands. This greedy move will only lower profits as only large stations playing the same damn songs will be able to afford to keep running. And then why would I use my bandwidth to listen to the same songs I can hear on my radio?

BTW, the two internet radio stations that I listen to, I checked their sites and both say they will have to shut down if this is not overturned. I really, really, f'in hate the riaa.

I wonder, do the stations that shut down still have to pay for 2006? Because that could put a few people in bankruptcy and really f up their lives financially.

[cyrilthefish]

Very shocked to hear about this...
if this goes ahead it will mean me simply stopping listening to new music altogether. I haven't brought a CD in years, except for a few bands i discovered on internet radio. I have internet radio on most of the time when at home, i only have MP3's for my PDA/Phone for when walking to work, but those are mostly recorded internet radio streams too

Heres a pretty good read about the issue, bear in mind this is one of the larger internet radio stations, the smaller the station is, the more crippling these fees are
http://www.di.fm/blog/read/2007/03/n...-about-to.html

SaveTheStreams.org has sample calculations here on what it means to stream to 10,000 concurrent listeners on average, if you are interested in the fine details. And keep in mind that Digitally Imported has far more listeners than in that example. We are talking about rates which are hundreds of % more than the revenues webcasters generate, even before any expenses for things such as wages, resources, hardware, and so on. How judges can come up with such numbers is beyond me. What we do know is that Digitally Imported was part of a collective of small commercial broadcasters which presented its arguments in court proceedings. Yet the judges completely threw virtually all of our arguments aside in making their decision.

[DXR_13KE]

if idiocy could be measured this would measure infinite.

[dire_wolf]

nooooooo more Pandora

If this gets passed i'll be a sad kitten

[Bladestorm]

Utterly ridiculous, I can't even understand how an organization that in theory should not be in the RIAA's back pockets can agree to fees to be paid retroactively when just introducing them at all will likely bankrupt most of those involved anyhow ? it boggles the mind.

[ralph.pickering]

Un-f*****g-believable. You know, I've been watching Jericho lately (check it out if you haven't already) and it does make me think, would it be all that bad if a couple of dozen nukes took out the US? Then I remember the friends I have in the US who aren't actually clueless ass-munchers and I think, pity no-one's developed a selective nuke... just takes out the idiots in an area. Or maybe somebody did, but unfortunately they were an idiot and didn't realise it, and so got incinerated by their own weapon.

[Constructacon]

I'd like the RIAA to name 1 other business that can get away with charging someone more for a product or service they paid for a year ago without getting bitchslapped. They're living in a world of pure fantasy.

What were there arguments of how this actually helps the artists?

[eddtox]

I have the solution! We form a huge army of geeks and shut down the RIAA!! Who's in?

[r4tch3t]

I'm in.

[pendragon]

this is pretty f'ed up.. i was looking at the DI.fm post the other day (ive listened to them for years) and I was sorely tempted to email my government representatives over this crap ...and I still might

[specofdust]

Tbh, a far more accurate title for this thread would be "Internet Radio Decimated By New Royalty Fees". The vast majority of net radio stations, from the big hitters like Soma and Di.Fm, to the tiny stations that only have a few hundred listeners and barely broke even each year, are going to go under here. This sucks.