New Media Great surge in online radio listening

"A recent MeasureCast study shows that time spent listening to online radio has jumped 159 percent since last year.

Blame it on the demise of Napster, which means one less centralized location to download free music. Or chalk it up to improved broadband technology that makes streaming music sound almost like its traditional radio cousin. Whatever the reason, it's good news for some of the world's largest channels."

Salon Jesse Helms: Web radio's hero

"For the noncommercial Web broadcasting community, mostly composed of politically left-leaning independent and college radio stations, an unlikely ally has emerged to help in their fight against potentially crippling royalty payments. He is Jesse Helms, the Republican senator from North Carolina, and while his actions may very well be motivated by the interests of small conservative Christian Internet broadcasters, his support for the Small Webcasters Settlement Act (SWSA) has compelled some noncommercial station backers to feel for him what they never imagined they could -- gratitude."

redux [10.01.02]
Forbes U.S. House cancels vote on Webcasters royalty rates

"The House of Representatives canceled a vote on Tuesday that would have postponed royalty payments for Internet radio broadcasts, after industry players said they could settle the issue on their own."

" A lobbyist for a performing artists' union said the deal could set a separate rate structure for smaller mom-and-pop Webcasters, or could cover large players like Clear Channel Communications Inc."

Salon Radio killed the radio star

"Radio execs share an almost palpable tenet that holds that radio is bulletproof. They see the medium as we see cockroaches and Twinkies: indestructible.

Jim Boyle, a Wall Street analyst for Wachovia Securities, moderated the panel at which Reese spoke. He comes from a family that's been in the radio business for 45 years, and he summed up this particular philosophy nicely when he told me: "Radio is 82 years young. It has survived a lot of new media, survived a lot of different options inside the car space: you've had CB radios, you've had cassettes, you've had eight-track cartridges, you've had six- and now 10-CD changers in the trunk. You've had satellite radio that's shown up ... so it does seem to be a situation where 10 years from now, 20 years from now, there's still gonna be radio."

In their "experiments," radio execs have starved their stations of manpower and research and music testing and polluted them with extra commercials and digital disc jockeys. They're betting it will all work out just fine."

redux [06.21.02]
The New York Times Internet Radio Criticizes Rate on Royalties
[requires 'free' registration]

"Under the ruling, radio companies will pay the recording industry 0.07 cent each time they play a song over the Internet. Webcasters, who have been slow to find advertisers despite drawing large audiences, had hoped that the rate would be set at a percentage of revenue, a move that they argued would allow them time to build a new outlet for music.

"For a lot of independent Webcasting companies, this is going to take them out," said John Jeffrey, executive vice president of Live 365, a network of 47,000 stations. "There's going to be less music put out on the Web, and that's not good for artists or anyone else.""

USA Today Neither side happy with Net radio royalty rates

"Webcasters like Live365, a network of about 30,000 radio stations created by individual Internet users, wanted a rate based on a percentage of revenue to pay performers and record labels. Webcasters, like over-the-air radio stations, already use such an arrangement to pay songwriters and composers.

But the Copyright Office said that because many webcasters have such small revenues, there would be little compensation for those who own the copyrights to songs."

redux [04.03.02]
Salon The battle over Web radio continues

"Now to your propaganda about webcaster finances. First, you point out that most webcasters are either out of business or on shoestring budgets. For those out of business, I assume you'd agree that royalties had nothing to do with it because they'd never paid a dime (e.g., NetRadio went out of business before the royalty rates were even announced thus denying record companies and artists in the millions of dollars). For the others, you claim that most are using Shoutcast or other free software. But they still must be either paying for bandwidth costs that would generally exceed their royalties, or having someone like live365 pay on their behalf. Live365 participated in the CARP proceeding (and actually hired two different high-priced law firms to represent them!). In the proceeding, live365 submitted evidence demonstrating how their costs for bandwidth, employment, sales and marketing, and hardware and software were many, many times their revenues."

"We understand that hobbyists are different. We are prepared and intend to work with true hobbyists to find a solution."