End Of The Road For Internet Radio?
We got word here this morning that yesterday afternoon that the US Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. denied webcasters’ emergency motion for a stay of the new royalty rates set to crush the Internet broadcasting industry. This means that now the rates will officially go into effect this Sunday, July 15th, and many webcasters are facing retroactive royalty bills of tens of thousands of dollars (millions for the big guys).
First things first – CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES TODAY! Urge them to support the “Internet Radio Equality Act.” If they’ve already co-sponsored, thank them and tell them to fight to bring it to the floor for an immediate vote. Even if you’ve already called, call again. If the line is busy, call back. This is our last good chance to make some noise about this before lots (and I mean LOTS) of Internet radio operations go silent.
Where will it go from here? What happens on July 16th? Hard to tell at this point. Webcasters really have three options: cough up the piles of cash required to keep broadcasting and the tens or hundreds of thousands that they owe in back royalties (not an option for most webcasters); not pay and keep broadcasting (which will put you legally in violation of US Copyright Law); or shut it down (which still doesn’t relieve you of paying the thousands of dollars in retroactive royalties back to January 1, 2006). It’s a difficult choice to be sure. While the fight to overturn the royalty rates will surely continue after July 15th, I think the majority of small webcasters will be unwilling to take the financial and legal risk of staying on-the-air and will simply go silent.
We’ll post more updates here at The Futurist as we get em. Also some great resources for the latest news on the situation are KurtHanson.com, SaveNetRadio.org, and for a more in-depth legal analysis check out David Oxenford’s excellent Broadcast Law Blog.
July 12th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
If you’d like to share your thoughts or solutions regarding the CRB ruling, e-mail scoop@cmj.com with the subject “Internet Royalty Reactions” to be included with the statements posted on the CMJ.com (including WOXY’s own Bryan Miller.)
[Editor: And of course you're encouraged to include your comments here at The Futurist as well.]
And for more background on how this ruling came to be, you can check out this week’s spotlight on CMJ “July 15: The Day Internet Radio Dies.”
July 12th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Of course, this a grave concern for hundreds of online broadcasts, but what does this mean for the future of WOXY?
Don’t tell me I’m gonna have to buy another going-out-of-business t-shirt.
July 12th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Luckily we’re tied to lala and thanks to them we can stay on the air while the challenges continue to overturn the CRB’s ruling. But were we still a standalone operation, this definitely would have been the end of the road for us. So we’re not going off the air on Monday, but we’re also not out of the woods yet.
July 12th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I know it wasn’t feasible when it WOXY.com was stand-alone, but could LALA make deals directly with labels like satellite radio providers have?
It seems like LALA has the size and backing to try something like this. The only problem with this would be that internet radio diversity would still suffer a major blow if the CRB rate increase stands.
July 13th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Looks like the deadline has been extended…
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2007/07/webcasters_face_music
July 13th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
That’s awesome – I’ve never actually believed in the power of representative government until this moment.
What’s next?