New Royalty Rates Could Kill Internet Radio

[BJ_M]

"Kurt Hanson's Radio Internet Newsletter has an analysis of the new royalty rates for Internet Radio announced by the US Copyright Office. The decision is likely to put most internet radio stations out of business by making the cost of broadcasting much higher than revenues. From the article: 'The Copyright Royalty Board is rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)...[The] math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.'"

http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/030207/index.shtml


/from slashdot

[dnix71]

Offshore hosting and offshore ownership will get a big boost from this.
This is probably done to bankrupt the independent stations. Internet radio mirrors of commercial radio will be able to write off the losses.