Radio Free Harp Says: Save Internet Radio!

Radio needs to be free, free like the internet is at the moment, global corporatism is creeping in and will put it's strangle hold on this form of expression like they try to do to everything else. We must fight them where and when we can.....................PEACE....................Scott

Radio Free Harp Says: Save Internet Radio!

By Harp Magazine.

Remember the glory days of early 70s FM radio, when the emphasis really was on music, not marketing, and you could hear diverse artists like John Coltrane, the Faces, MC5 and Loretta Lynn on the same goddamn wonderful station?

You say you weren’t even alive in the early 70s? Well, if you’re among the 50 million monthly webcast listeners who enjoy that medium’s more eclectic independent sites, you’re having essentially the same experience. But you better enjoy it now, because on July 15 it could all come to an end.

It’s a classic David versus Goliath scenario, albeit one in which Goliath holds an even greater advantage than usual. Based in large part on testimony from the major labels’ proxy, the Recording Industry Association of America, on March 2 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) increased per-song-played royalty rates from 0.0008 to 0.0019 over the next three years. That fractional difference—retroactive through 2006—raises small webcasters’ rates by 300 to 1,200 percent (depending on the size of their audiences) over the next three years, effectively shuttering most of the nation’s 2,500 webcasters. Critics say the only ones left standing will likely be giants like AOL and Yahoo, whose playlists tend to be far more major-label friendly.

The Save Net Radio Coalition held a three-day “hill walk” last week to canvass Congress in support of a new bill sponsored by Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL). The Internet Radio Equality Act would provide royalty parity by vacating the CRB’s March 2 decision and applying a uniform rate of 7.5 percent of revenues to commercial Internet radio, bringing it in line with satellite radio’s fees. In response, the CRB pushed the May 15 payment-due deadline back to the current July date.

“I certainly feel that we were heard,” says Tim Westergren of the popular independent website, Pandora. “But I also came away realizing that we really have to spend a lot of time educating people on this, making sure it’s above the radar and that people understand that the CRB’s new rate structure will hurt musicians, not help them.”