2007-03-02 US webcasting rules

Overview

On March 2, 2007, the United States government, through the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), announced a new set of regulations for internet radio, including higher rates that are retroactive to the previous year (2006) and which escalate steeply (more than doubling) up through 2010. There is also a $500 minimum fee per channel per year

objections

Given the rates currently paid for advertising on webcasts and the low demand for advertising airtime, these new rates make webcasting essentially commercially non-viable.

The $500 annual minimum is especially prohibitive for sites (such as Live365) offering subscribers the ability to run their own stations: although some of the stations make money, the majority of them are non-commercial and extremely low traffic, with listener-counts in the single or double digits.

Furthermore, the new regulations require webcasters to pay these rates even if they only broadcast content whose license allows free broadcasting. This is problematic in a number of ways.

For one, it is not clear where the dividing line, if any, is between a "webcaster" and an artist 'casting their own material. Even if the regulations still permit individuals to 'cast their own material without paying royalties, there are some entirely legitimate in-between situations which now might (or might not) trigger a requirement to pay tithes to the record industry without receiving any significant value in kind:

• an artist who streams their own original music but whose copyrights reside with a publishing company (which the artist may or may not own in full) rather than with the artist personally
• an individual who streams original music of bands who are her/his personal friends, with the bands' permission
• a record label (such as Magnatune) which streams the original music of their artists, with the artists' permission
• a web service site (such as Jamendo) which provides a service allowing artist-clients to stream their own music, and which may publish streams of music from multiple artist-clients with the artists' permission

These new regulations seem very much like another power-grab by the music industry.

Links

• 2007-03-12 New Music Royalty Rates May Shut Down Internet Radio
• 2007-04-10 Why the New Royalty Rates Hurt Artists by Fred Wilhelms, a lawyer who represents musicians and songwriters
• SaveTheStreams.org: "Internet radio may be driven out of business within weeks by a Copyright Royalty Board decision that gives record companies a royalty rate that exceeds 100% of most webcasters' total revenues..."
  • FAQ
• Save Internet Radio at Live365, possibly the largest webcasting company, with thousands of subscriber-operated streams

Related Pages

• The new rules are part of the steadily increasing media consolidation in the United States.