Royalty Rates Rock Internet Radio

Bucc5062 writes: "With all the attention on DRM, DCMA, *IAA arm twisting and their effect on the music industry, an area of digital music that is been less talked about, but important to diversification of music listening is Web Radio or streaming radio. Congress has started to impose higher and higher fees on each song "performed" such that within a year, smaller internet radio stations may have to go off line.

Those affected by the new rates, which change the royalty paid to a song's performers from a percentage of revenue to a per-song, per-listener fee, include not just Web-only outfits mimicking traditional radio stations, but also more specialized digital music services such as Pandora (pandora.com) and the Internet streams of traditional broadcast stations. "It's absurd," said Hanson. "Under this, our royalty would go to $600,000 for the year, which means we would be bankrupted."

SaveTheStream.org http://savethestreams.org/ has established a site to information and promote the fight against these rate hikes. The Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/columnist s/chi-0703070314mar07,0,6077662.column?coll=chi-bu siness-hed covers this lesser known but important story. Internet radio is a grass roots system to hear music from around the world or the local home front. It needs to be saved."