The Feds Crash the Internet Radio Party
The Internet and a small device costing less than $50 have brought the whole wide world of quality radio into our living room.
Any radio station worth its salt now webcasts, often in a high-definition format and sometimes through multiple streams. By hard-wiring my computer to my stereo system through a HiFi Link (a more expensive wireless version also is available) I can listen to such superb stations as WBGO (Jazz) in Newark, New Jersey, WXPN (Alternative) in Philadelphia and KJAZ (Jazz) in Long Beach, California.
Well, it’s been swell, but now the feds have crashed the party.
The U.S Copyright Royalty Board recently issued a ruling that could dramatically increase the cost of streaming music on the Internet. Even more ominous is that the proposed royalties by themselves greatly exceed the revenue that these terrific listener-supported public radio stations generate from their streams.
What to do? Write your congressperson and support your favorite stations with a tax-deductible donation.
More here.
Hey, and while we’re on the subject, if you have a favorite station, let us know what, where and why.
11 Responses to “The Feds Crash the Internet Radio Party”
yes Shaun Mullen… I wonder why they are doing this huge $ increase suddenly, what precipitated it… As I understand it, community public radio stations with bricks and mortar pay a flat mustic fee yearly, a substanial one, but the station gets to play all kinds of music as often as they want I think, without incurring more charges.
My favorite station is one I do commentaries for occasionally, KGNU Boulder, an old community public radio station that has gone through many changes over the years, and still has Rasta guys wandering the halls and a suit now and then, and snow baorders and poets and professors and just a group of really smart people who are dedicated so deeply to community.
KGNU’s format runs from Native American and Latino news to a wonderful weekly news show bringing in native speakers of Euro and Asian languages but who now live in the US. They tell about the news from their hometown point of view in the old country. They have music some of which is the strangest I’ve ever heard, (think Yoko with coyotes and atonal computer music instruments) _ and some from 100 years ago and everything in between including some heavy sweet R&B, and an excellent early morning drive time anchored by Sam Fuqua who used to cover the State Capitol and is poignantly insightful. They run a 20 min segment of Alan Watts everyday.
A few years ago when I was ketnoting at the national public and community radio stations convention in Madison Wisc., there was such a difference between the NPR people and the community radio people; the latter warm and accessible and interested in others… the former, well, let’s just put it this way, All Things Considered and Fresh Air cost huge bucks and kept raising their download satellite fees… until many fine small community stations had to bail.
National Public does some great things and has some great people.. they are so lucky to have been so subsidized, taking the lion’s share of Fed money, I dont know, I would have wished their mgt would have been more down to earth and kind to their other airwave sisters and brothers.
That said, some of the coolest radio people I met there were sister and brother Indian-Latinos from the Navajo reservation community radio station and a wonderful group of African men from Ghana who were doing community radio broadcasts to solar powered radios in villages, playing music, having the local healer/ shamans talk on air, and dispensing health and hygiene info. The women of the villages would go wind the radio in the mornings and set them outside so everyone could hear. I think the station at that time was broadcasting about 3 hours a day five days a week. They came to this with the help of a great Anglo guy from the US who went around begging equip for them and flying to Africa to help them set up.
Just writing this, well thank you for the opportunity, Shaun, it just reminds me once again how though weary this world is, also how wondrous.
Tell your contact you linked to, to hang in there. I think things might get straightened out amicably and affordably. Time. What we all need.
dr.e
well that was way longer than I thought. Sorry. It was a wonderful question.
dr. e
Dr. E:
Thank you for the thoughtful reply and recommendation of KGNU.
Public radio is a special part of the American town square. As it is, NPR has never been healthier (thanks in large part to that $200 million bequest by Joan Kroc, who was the widow of McDonalds founder Ray Kroc) and in my view its programming just gets better and better.
The situation for local public radio stations is far more problematic. The three that I cited in my post do rather well because they have large and involved listenerships. Both ‘BGO and ‘XPN raise well over a million bucks each year from smalll listener contributions.
I deal with copyright questions regularly since my day job is working with visiting scholars in a rare book and manuscript library. Copyright law for that stuff is clear, but the Internet is a whole new world and there is a lot of sorting out to be done. The Copyright Office’s decision is draconian, but there are many miles more to go before this situation is resolved.
This just sounds like a dollar grap by the recording insustry. If radio stations pay a flat fee for royalties, it shouldn’t matter if the brodcast is over the air or the Internet(s). Those evil Demonocrat trial lawyers, or the corparate Repuglican lawyers are behibd this.
Rudi:
I think that you are right to an extent. The record industry is a dinosaur that has been slow to adapt to new technologies and has deservedly taken a bottom-line beating as a result.
Artist royalties are another matter, and as someone who worked for a couple of rock bands and has many musician friends, I am most sensitive to the issue. That said, record companies historically have gypped musicians out of royalty monies and an increasing number are simply bypassing the companies and marketing directly to the listener through the Internet. That is great, and there is no such thing as too many unemployed record company executives. But we also want to make sure that that majority of musicians who have contractual obligations aren’t getting screwed, whether it’s CD sales or radio or Internet play.
Like I said earlier, it’s going to be a while before the online sitch gets resolved.
Rudi,
I actually think they want to run people out of business. In fact there is a per song fee that is paid by radio stations and some other outlets. The fee structure that the Copyright Review Board decided they wanted to impose on internet radio is triple that fee.
The major effects aren’t really on the Public Radio Stations. There are also new businesses that have started up that are pure internet radio stations based either on the personality of the person/people running things and their taste in music, types of music that get no air play on other venues or other factors. It is these operations that really run on a shoestring and will be killed by this rate increase. I believe that was the intended target all along. Why, I don’t know, unless it is simply the threat that music industry executives feel from any change in their traditional business model which gives them immense control over what the public hears. I think they can’t stand the idea of the potential of a highly fragmented market that might come to support large numbers of small labels existing that don’t care too much for RIAA and their insistence on control and DRM.
Sorry about the bad spelling, we need the preview back(BL has it built in).
Shaun – I’m familar with starving artists, I was sniping at corparate lawyers versus trial lawyers. I know many recording artists don’t make squat.
JS – I’m old enough to remember free format FM, Detroit used to have WABX Air Aces. WDET had a conterversy over niche music programing versus talk and ATC. Long ago WDET played alt rock and ECM jazz when other stations didn’t even know these artist existed.
Thanks Shaun! I’ve been listening to WBGO through my PC since I got broadband. Some other favorites are:
WMUB LISTENER-SUPPORTED PUBLIC RADIO FROM MIAMI UNIVERSITY (Oxford OH) http://www.wmub.org/
WBEZ Chicago Public Radio http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/
A small request – as commenters recommend a station, please include the Internet address!
jim satterfield: yes, when the ‘low power’ stations first surfaced, oh maybe about ten years ago, there definitely was a move to put them out of business… those station had maybe a ten mile radius but any soul could broadcast from home. The B IG radio stations went fairly kookie-lookie and blocked blocked , made it into a bandwidth a bandwidth war. Much fighting in Congress. Then NPR started fighting for a larger share of the Federal pie that is actually given to ALL public radio stations, not just the one in DC. NPR wrangled in Congress and got the lion’s share, taking much away from the other pr stations natioanlly.. making them suffer financially and some of the stations closed. Then some of the surviving ones, like KGNU, bought a translator far from base, thereby now owning bandwidth. Mortgaged to the hilt, any station who did this. But then came streaming over internet… suddenly without massively expensive infrastructure, you could braodcast theroretically, anywhere. So the BIG stations and NPR and the littler public and community radio stations started dong a feed, fundraising almost constantly to run more than one way of delivering the news and music. If the Coopyright office has inaugurated this… which sounds really weird to me, cause they dont have anything to do with setting fees, the record companies, ASCAP and the musicians if they are indies, do. But that someone want to get rid of the internet broadcasters… could be true… but it wouldnt seem to be the musicians… I dont think it would anyway. Someone else. Someone at the Congressional level. Some one who is being lobbied, but by what group?
A vast majority of the stations I listen to will not be affected by the Copyright Board’s decision, as they are either based off-shore or play non-RIAA-based artists. Or both, for that matter. But I’ll only include the ones I listen to most.
Also, all are used with Winamp or other player capable of utilizing Shoutcast stream formats. (I don’t use anything other than Winamp for myself.)
RantRadio Industrial and RantRadio Punk: Found at http://www.rantradio.com/, RantMedia’s flagship products are exactly what they say they are: industrial for one and punk for the other. Neither one is your garden-variety watered-down MTV-and-ClearChannel-safe content. You have been warned.
Synthetika @ http://www.synthetika.org/ : Ranging from EBM, synthpop, Eurodance, and modern gothic, this station out of Lima, Peru, is what every kid that wore all black in high school needs now that we’ve grown older. Especially if we haven’t grown out of wearing all black. (Even though they’re currently playing a band called Daily Planet that sounds like a cross between Savage Garden, Flock of Seagulls, and Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark. Go fig.)
idobi Radio @ http://www.idobi.com/ : This is the first station on my bookmarks that will be affected by the Copyright Review Board’s decision. Think pre-grunge KROQ without the uber-cool DJs like Jed The Fish and you have a good grasp of the music selection. (Although they have played Avril Lavinge. And KROQ wouldn’t dare think about that one.)
Digitally Imported @ http://www.di.fm/ : And now the second one that gets affected by the decision, DI stations cover the frantic ranges between trance, house, ambient, HI-NRG, drum ‘n’ bass, lounge and every step in between. If you like it at 120 bpm, this website is for you. (It’s also known as my cleaning house music.)
Why are all of my stations purely internet, with no over-the-air content whatsoever? Because I live within broadcast range of KBCO and KGNU, plus a Jack format station and a Coast-To-Coast After Dark affiliate. I don’t need much else than that.
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