What is Digg?16 Comments
- llbbl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Digg this up so people sign the petition! Its important!
- llbbl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Please save Internet Radio and kill the RIAA
- bakagaigin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you've ever listened to any online radio stations, such as anything on shoutcast, sign this!
I recieved this e-mail today that explains the situation a little better:
You may have heard, but once again internet radio is facing huge additional royalties for broadcasting music. These royalties are in addition to the ones that we pay to ASCAP and BMI, and are a royalty that is only paid by internet broadcasters. Over-the-air (AM/FM) broadcasters are explicitly exempt from this royalty; it only applies to internet broadcasters and subscription music services.
In the past, we paid royalties based on a percentage of our revenues, in our case 10% of our revenue. But the new royalties don't allow that percentage of revenue factor, and instead charge us for each song we play times the number of people listening. This works out to about $8 per average concurrent listener per month. In 2006, we averaged over 6000 average concurrent listeners per month, and the royalties we will have to pay for 2006 is about $628,000, over 4 times the amount of money we brought in.
And these rates go up drastically each year, until 2010, where they are 2.5 times their initial rate: by then we will have to pay over $1 million dollars a year in royalties if we want to stay on the air.
So you can see that this puts us in an impossible position. And to make it even worse, the rates are retroactive to 2006.
It doesn't seem fair that a small radio service like SomaFM has to pay all these additional royalties, when over-the-air stations who reach much larger audiences are exempted from paying them.
If you are in the USA, we would appreciate it if you could sign this online petition which will be presented to members of Congress.
It's important for us to let Congress know that independent internet radio is about to be forced out of business.
We need to keep our existing "percentage of revenue" royalty rate structure, or better yet, have Congress extend the exemption to internet radio stations as well as terrestrial (over-the-air) stations.
http://www.petitiononline.com/SIR2007r/petition.html
Thanks for all of your support for SomaFM in the past. We will do what we need to do to keep SomaFM on the air and broadcasting. We love you!
Rusty Hodge,
General Manager and Program Director
SomaFM.com - brendanc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This needs to get to the front page! Get your friends together and get them to digg this up!
/SIGNED! - llbbl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11000 signatures in the past hour! Come on diggers spread the word!
- crthead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is truly worth fighting for. These people have no clue what they are doing. I hope this is a catalyst for people to stand up and fight these idiots before its too late!
- sewerhobo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There are now 3400 signatures!
- derekivey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Signed & Dugg.
- Travisx2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1/signed
- llbbl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12500 -> 5000 signatures overnight also!
- llbbl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well 19 diggs -> 62 diggs overnight not too bad. Hopefully will hit homepage today!
- Steffetje, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Signed. I fully support saving Internet Radio
- deciauinrodough, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Internet Radio MUST be saved - I use it all the time. Please help take action by signing this!!!!! Also spread the word to your friends!
- deadowl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0*GASP*
If the RIAA doesn't stop this, it will speed up the inevitable doom caused by their irrelevance in the modern distribution of music. (*cough* anyone notice the bigger ticket for indy music lately? *cough*)
You can sign if you want to listen to RIAA-locked music. I won't. Maybe if these companies lose enough money, they'll have to sell all their music back to the artists... if the artists could actually afford it after being ripped off by the likes of Sony/BMG, EMI, etc.
I'll Digg this for the people who would. - leonardstern, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I was just talking to my friend who works at Rhapsody, one of the more popular subscription music services. Since they "create" thousands of internet radio stations to showcase music, they would have to pay a straight up fee for each of these stations. He was telling me about the implications this would have on their business model. Devastating.
- dvdklnr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Keep signing - it's 19068 16:18 3/13/07 PDT
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