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This Is Still A Serious And Unresolved Issue!
The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) licensing rate hikes took effect on July 15, 2007. Please call and email your Congressman and Senator in support of "The Internet Radio Equality Act" (definition), and avert the bankruptcy of thousands of web radio stations.
PLEASE! Sign the petition!
www.ipetitions.com/petition/saveinternetradio/
PLEASE! Send a note to your Senator!
www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/
PLEASE! Send a note to your Congressman!
Enter Your Zip Code Here To Find Your Congressman
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www.savenetradio.org ]]
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UPDATES:
(August 5, 2008)
Recently we, at Melted Metal, read an article on TorrentFreak about rock band, BuckCherry. Evidently, they have been accused of leaking their own album to the BitTorrents, then blaming so called 'Pirates' for the uploads. This makes a great deal of sense to us, because the band obviously needs the promotional exposure before hitting the road. It has been proven, over and over, that BitTorrents supercharge the concert circuit. On top of that, labels have been blaming BitTorrents for slacking sales, which is a great excuse by which to steal money from web stations through bogus licensing laws.
But BuckCherry was not thinking about their label, or their sales. They knew that they would make nothing from the release unless it sells at least 300,000 units, and that with the serious lack of tour support from Atlantic they would have a poorly financed tour. But, they 'do' know one thing- that their bread and butter is completely reaped on the road. My guess is that their label, Atlantic Records, knew nothing about the leak source, and that the band was just looking out for themselves.
Just keep in mind that 95 percent of BitTorrent downloads would never have been sales, and that downturns in major label unit sales have always been caused by an array of business reasons, long before file-sharing came around. These reasons extend from economic downturns to poor A&R signing choices, to the inability of bands to tour overseas, to the difficultly in accessing radio play. Labels have conveniently forgotten all of this, and simply blame only one source- BitTorrents.
(Click here to read the TorrentFreak article)
(August 1, 2008)
Outspoken artist representative Fred Wilhelms has posted his thoughts on Tuesday's Senate Judiciary hearing on Internet radio music royalties. Wilhelms stated: "...artists deserve to be compensated when their music is played by webcasters, but [musicians] can't be compensated if the webcasters aren't there to play the music." (read Fred Wilhelm's full comments here). Also, Performance royalties rights group musicFirst complained yesterday about the recent $24 billion privatization deal of Clear Channel, stating that: "...casts a spotlight on radio's failure to compensate the artists and musicians". (Click for full details by RAIN/Kurt Hanson)
(July 31, 2008)
A new point of view, based on the analysis on the RAIN/Kurt Hanson team, is that the committee hearing went quite well after all. There was near-universal agreement among the senators and speakers (except, of course, for the record company representatives, who did not come off as credible) that the CRB decision, with its $500-per-channel "administrative fees" and effectively 75% to 200% royalty rates was a failure that needs to be unwound by legislation or negotiated away. Furthermore, almost everyone seemed to agree that the "willing buyer / willing seller" standard for setting royalty rates was unworkable.
Perhaps most importantly, there was a magical moment relatively late in the Q&A when Sen. Feinstein seemed to have an "Aha!" moment after listening again to pro-webcasting recording artist Matt Nathanson. She said something to the effect of "this is a conflict between an old way and a new way."
(Click here for details by RAIN/Kurt Hanson)
(July 30, 2008)
The Senate hearing, July 29th, concerning the disastrous webcaster royalty rate hikes by the CRB did not go very well for webcasters. Labels argued to the ignorance of the senate committee, who simply do not understand the technical nature of the medium. These current CRB rates are 'not' market driven rates. Small webcasters cannot pay the rates, and large over-the-air and satellite stations just negotiate around them, so how are they fair market rates? In addition, over-the-air radio pays nothing, and satellite radio pays just 7.5 percent, a fraction of the CRB webcaster rates that will take 75 (seventy-five) percent of webcaster gross revenues, with multiple increases over the next few years.
(Click here for details by RAIN/Kurt Hanson)
Click Here For Previous Updates
ARTICLES: (directly related)
P2P Net News: "SoundExchange Keeps Artist's Performance Money" (4/28/08)
Wired Blog: "Hillary Clinton Monitors Webcasters And SoundExchange" (10/10/07)
Digital Music News: "RIAA Spends $650,000 Lobbying Congress In 2007" (8/10/07)
(indirectly related)
Reuters: "Digital Music Firms Pay Heavy Price For Labels' Support" (4/07/08)
eFlux Media: "Nine Inch Nails Album Earns $1.6M On Web" (3/17/08)
LA Times: "Madonna And Radiohead Rock The Muisc Industry" (10/13/07)
Huff/Tim Karr: "FCC Closes The Window To An Open Internet" (8/01/07)
Digital Music News: "RIAA Spends $650,000 Lobbying Congress In 2007" (8/10/07)
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Please Read The Facts:
'P2P NETWORKS ARE THE REAL ENEMY' not web radio. Web radio has nothing to do with illegal file-swapping, and sells 100 times more units than people Stream-rip (that's cheaper than label's cut-out expenses). The real threat are P2P networks. But now P2P's are a critical bandwidth technology used everywhere on the internet. There is no remedy, except to create a new social movement where people purposefully pay for the 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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