Well, it ain’t looking good.
As reported by the BBC, a Washington D.C. Court of Appeals has denied a petition to stay the fees set to go into effect on July 15th for internet-based radio stations - fees that would essentially bankrupt all but the wealthiest of web radio broadcasters.
As if enough hasn’t already been said about the arbitrary and baseless meaning behind these new rates, Ars Technica reported that SoundExhange, as part of the initial fee structure they proposed, also included a $500 per channel “administrative fee”.
When we discussed the $500-per-channel administrative fees with a representative of Internet radio provider Live365 last month, we learned that Live365 handles all of its station administration and licensing itself and merely submits reports to SoundExchange “as a single service.” One wonders why SoundExchange needs $500 per channel for administration when licensing and administrative services are already largely handled by Internet radio providers.
That per channel fee was capped at $2500 per broadcaster as part of a “settlement” offered by SoundExchange, which, amongst other things, was also aimed at preventing webcasters from lobbying congress to regulate these fee structures. In addition, the offer was only good until 2008, at which the initial fees proposed would go into effect.
Now is the time to contact your congressional and senatorial representatives and as them to support H.R. 2060 and S. 1353 respectively (as of this posting, both links to the bills were returning “high traffic” errors, which hopefully is a good sign).
Other resources and articles:
RIAA Myths about web radio
Court declines to postpone Internet radio royalty hike (Ars Technica)
Save Net Radio
Digital Media Association
Rusty on Radio (Blog with up to date info)
SomaFM Founder: SoundExchange Wants Google to Buy Pandora (Wired Online: Listening Post)
