It's entitled "The Record Industry's Decline":
click here to read it.
Quote from the ex-head of the RIAA on the post-Napster/pre-iTunes 2001-2003 period: "That's when we lost the users," Hilary Rosen says. "Peer-to-peer took hold. That's when we went from music having real value in people's minds to music having no economic value, just emotional value."
Here is one Webcasters response to the huge raise in copyright royalties plus a $500/year 'administrative fee' ordered to go into effect July 15th:
And July 15th gets closer...
Love & Peace, Clarence
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If the hyperbolic cries coming from webcasters and big media companies like AOL, Google, and Yahoo are correct, all music webcasting will cease tomorrow. July 15 has been hailed by webcasters not wanting to pay fair market value for the music they webcast as "the day the music dies". This is the date the new royalty rates for webcasters playing music set by the Library of Congress's Copryright Royalty Board are set to go into effect.
Webcasters have formed a coalition called SaveNetRadio, funded by the mega-web-media companies, to get the public to lobby Congress to stop the implementation of the new rates. This effort lead to the normally progressive Rep. Jay Inslee to fight against musicians and take the side of Corporate wecasters to push even lower than current rates webcasters would have to pay artists and labels for their music. But efforts in Congress have failed to get enough traction to pass anything before the July 15 deadline, leaving the issue to the Courts.
However Thursday a U.S. federal appeals court Wednesday denied a petition from music webcaster associations for an emergency stay of new royalty rates http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134504-c,audio/article.html, meaning the new rates will go into effect tomorrow.
But no worries, webcasters won't be shutting down as they have claimed they would have to. The recording artist and label side of this fight, represented by Soundexchange and many musician groups, have always been in good faith negotitations with small and non-profit webcasters trying to find a way to make sure artists and labels are paid fairly for their music, while simultaneoulsy ensuring webcasters keep broadcasting great music.
Soundexchange has already made an offer to small webcasters to keep their rates at the level set in 2003, rates webcasters have flourished under. Now Soundexchange has also offered a cap on the per channel minimum fee so companies like Pandora will not have to pay exhorbitant ammounts. The cries that Soundexchange wants to put webcasters out of business can now clearly be seen as hysterical spin, and hopefully the people making these statements will be ignored in the future.
"We do expect commercial webcasters like Yahoo and AOL to pay the new royalty rates set by the CRB due July 15," Simson said. "It is essential that recording artists and content owners receive full and fair compensation from the webcasters making use of their creative works."
Read more here - http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/071307/index.shtml
Please keep supporting web radio, especially the excellent stations like KEXP.org! And let Rep. Jay Inslee know you support both web radio and recording artists getting paid fairly for their music and that the CRB rates along with Soundschanges compromises accomplish this - email Jay at Jay.Inslee@mail.house.gov and tell him to get back on the side of the creators of music. Also go here - http://capwiz.com/soundexchange/home/ to write the Congressional represenative from your district.
If you want to get past the spin machine of the mega-corporate media - check out more on this issue at http://www.soundexchange.com/
You might wish to catch up on a few facts:
Copyright Royalty rates that Webcasters pay, if the Internet Radio Equality Act is passed someday, would go up not down;
The new rates have been in effect, but July 15th is the date that all additional royalties under the CRB decision (for all of 2006 and, under the still-higher 2007 rate, for the first 6 months of 2007) plus the $500 per channel (station) per year Administrative Fee were due into SoundExchange's office;
Since SoundExchange was founded by and has seats on it's Board of Directors for Sony/BMG, Warner Music Group, EMI, and Universal Music Group, to refer to "webcasters and big media companies" in a negative light is kinda funny, like a sea accusing an ocean of being wet;
the offer to stay at the 2003 rate was only for another 18 months, and was conditioned on Webcasters ceasing any & all legislative & judicial efforts to modify the CRB rates;
Finally, I'm one of 10,000 non-professional Webcasters broadcasting through Live365, along with many others using other (legal, royalty-paying) services or operating (again, legally) on their own - I make $12,000 a year - I strain to pay my ISP & for my broadcasting package on Live365 (if you'd like, I'll publish my tax return here) - if I'm part of the "spin machine of the mega-corparate media", what is SoundExchange (founded by the 5, now 4 multinational music corporations that own 90% of the recordings sold in the U.S., & a similar percentage of the recordings sold in virtually every country on Earth)?
I have signed my name to every post & every comment I have ever made to any blog, message board, or podcast in 8 years online...why aren't you willing to do the same?
By the way, Google has no Webcasting services. That's as big a mistake as Mr. Simson's assertion several times that Microsoft (which ended all webcasting activity a couple of years ago) was one of the "big media companies".
I hope all Musicians do go to SoundExchange.com...to sign up with SoundExchange in order to recieve any & all copyright royalties due them. Live365 has paid royalties on music streamed since the service began in 1999, and since only 20,000 Artists have signed up (in May stations using Live365 played recordings by over 250,000 Artists) a lot of folks aren't getting their money. That's the problem.
Love & Peace, Clarence
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