This Is Still A Serious And Unresolved Issue!
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Satellite Radio Pays: 7.5%
Over-Air Radio Pays: Nothing !
Web Radio Must Pay: 70% to 300%
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What's So Fair
About That ??
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RIAA and SoundExchange (lobbyist/collection entities of large American record labels) want to kill web radio as we know it. To bring order and control back to their struggling marketing models, they have convinced the 'Copyright Royalty Board' (CRB) to inflict arbitrary music licensing fee increases of up to 1200 percent that are designed specifically to kill an open web radio market. Those rate hikes took 'retroactive' effect on July 15, 2007, and webcasters are fighting for dear life to reverse these increases via passage of The Internet Radio Equality Act. Please help us by doing the following:
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UPDATES:
(March 5, 2009)
Therese Poletti: "Internet-radio royalty dispute heading to court"
Over the last two years, record companies have tried to squeeze excessive royalties from Internet-radio stations, the very stations that can help fuel future digital-music sales, and it's endangering some Web-based radio firms.
(Read Therese Poletti's entire MarketWatch article here)
(February 25, 2009)
RAIN: "Air-Radio Royalty Maybe As Damaging As CRB Rate To Web radio"
Industry attorney and RAIN contributor David Oxenford takes up the questions, noting that "given the high fees sought (and received) by the recording industry for the performance royalty in sound recordings from digital services…broadcasters could be asked to pay a huge bill." (Click for Additional Info By RAIN)
(David Oxenford's Blog Comments)
(February 16, 2009)
RAIN: "No Royalty Deals Announced Yet, Deadline Has Passed"
Yesterday’s apparent deadline for SoundExchange to reach a negotiated royalty settlement with webcasters passed last night — with no deals announced as of this morning. (Click for Additional Info By RAIN)
(RAIN NEWS FLASH: "SoundEx & NAB Reach Agreement" Click For Details)
(February 11, 2009)
RAIN: "Digital Music News says SoundEx royalty proposal 'fishy'"
SoundExchange’s misleadingly named "Small Commercial Webcaster Settlement Agreement" emits a "fishy smell," according to Digital Music News. The document is not the result of negotiations with the CRB-participant small commercial webcasters, as the title indicates, yet SoundExchange will submit the “deal” to Congress with or without input from webcasters. (Click for Additional Info By RAIN)
(Click for Additional Info By 'Digital Music News')
(February 9, 2009)
RAIN: "SOUNDEX SENDS MISNAMED “AGREEMENT” TO SMALLER WEBCASTERS"
Billboard.biz reports this morning that SoundExchange has e-mailed a “Small Commercial Webcaster Settlement Agreement” to a group of smaller webcasters on Friday, in which the webcasters would be required to give up a variety of rights to qualify for royalty rates essentially the same as those in 2002’s Small Webcaster Settlement Act (SWSA). SoundExchange told webcasters that they intend to submit the license to Congress this week with or without input from webcasters.
(Click for Additional Info By RAIN)
(January 27, 2009)
RAIN: "Webcasters' oral arguments in CRB appeal set for March 19, 2009"
Unsuccessful in petitioning the Copyright Royalty Board to rehear the case, webcasters filed an appeal of the decision in federal court on May 30, 2007. This past October, Congress passed the Webcaster Settlement Act, enabling SoundExchange to negotiate industry-wide royalty settlements with different classes of webcasters until February 15th. (Click for Additional Info By RAIN)
(January 15, 2009)
RAIN: "SoundEx and Public Radio Strike Royalty Deal"
SoundExchange and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have announced they’ve reached a deal on streaming performance royalties. Public broadcasters will pay copyright owners and performers $1.85 million and supply a consolidated "usage report" detailing song and artist play for all of public radio for the current 2006-2010 term. $1.85 million for 450 stations over 5 years results in an average per station per year cost of about $822, or around $69 per month per station. (Click for Additional Info By RAIN)
(October 30, 2008)
Canadian Copyright Board Announces Decision on Internet Royalties:
In an article by Broadcaster Magazine Online, the Copyright Board of Canada issued a decision dealing with the communication of musical works on the Internet. The royalties extend retroactively for the period of 1996 to 2006, and the Board will review rates going forward from 2007 in the near future. (Click For Broadcaster Magazine Article)
(Click for Additional Info By RAIN)
Click Here For Previous Updates
ARTICLES:
Cnet News: "Why Web Radio Faces Another Crisis" (02/23/09)
TorrentFreak: "Former EMI Boss: Fight Against Illicit P2P is 'Useless'" (02/12/09)
Eliot Van Buskirk/Wired: "Yahoo Transfers Music Webcasting to CBS" (12/03/08)
Peter Kafka: "Licensing Deal Close, But Pandora Not Out Of Woods" (11/06/08)
Hanson/RAIN: "How To Tell The Royalty Dispute Players" (10/28/08)
Click Here For Previous Articles
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Please Read The Facts:
The real enemy to labels are 'P2P NETWORKS', not web radio. Web radio has nothing to do with illegal file-swapping, and are licensed operators. There are some people who 'stream-rip', but anybody can easily rip 'any' over-air or satellite station. P2P networks are the real threat, but this technology is now embedded within every proxy server throughout the entire internet infrastructure. There is no remedy for major labels, except to create a new social movement where people purposefully pay for music they acquire (and the vast majority still do).
These new rate hikes have 'NOTHING TO DO WITH WRITERS' of music. Web radio stations already pay separate publishing royalties for writers, and have done so from the beginning. These new rates are for the 'Performance Rights', the license rights to play individual sound recordings of any given song. These are the primary rights that artists actually 'give or sell' to a label in return for financial support.
These new rates are 'NOT PERCENTAGES' of station's revenues, but 'FIXED RATES'. No matter how much money we make (or lose), they get their fixed rate. BUT, more than that, they are now being fixed at 300 to 1200 percent more than 2005 rates, and that will be MULTIPLIED BY 'EVERY SINGLE LISTENER'.
These new rate hikes are 'RETRO-ACTIVE' through January of 2006, and many stations that paid the 2005 rates through 2006 will immediately 'OWE' hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of dollars to SoundExchange, the royalty collection entity owned by the big 5 record labels. This will effectively 'KILL' many mid-size and larger stations, and may make future operations too expensive for smaller stations like this one.
These new rate hikes 'APPLY ONLY TO WEB RADIO'. With $20 Billion in annual revenues, over-the-air broadcast stations 'PAY NO PERFORMANCE RIGHTS FEES AT ALL'. Satellite radio only pays 7.5 percent of revenues for performance rights fees. But, with total annual gross revenues of only $500 million, web radio is forced to pay in excess of $2.1 Billion a year to SoundExchange. The lack of fairness is absurd, suspect, and dangerous.
Please Help Us Get "The Internet Radio Equality Act" Passed Now!
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