toby10 wrote: > RIAA has deep pockets, Internet Radio stations (and > those lobbying on their behalf, I presume) barely have enough $$$ to > pay their bills.
Correct. > What I think I understand: RIAA charges nothing to OTA AM/FM > broadcasters, very little to XM/Sirius (based on revenues & number of > listeners/subscribers), but wants to charge Internet Radio stations a > much higher fee rate than other broadcasting types? WHY? The OTA radio stations are grandfathered in. Commercial radio stations are required to pay a "mechanical" fee for each song. Its fairly expensive, about 5 cents per song. Its OK for the commercial radio stations because the station's economics are built on advertisements. The scale works for the OTA stations, you can play a song once, and have hundreds of thousands of listeners for both the song and the ads. A station may play 12 to 15 songs per hour, so its paying under $2 per hour in fees. Some of the streamers would stream hundreds of thousands of songs, each costing a fee. > What I don't understand: RIAA claims they are doing this to "protect > the artist" which I can understand *if* that were the case. Where are > the artists on this subject? Saying "protect the artist" spins a lot better on The Hill than the real words: Protect the greedy lawyers who are the record labels. > It seems > the established artists, for the most part, are rather silent on the > issue. I'd guess they either side with the RIAA or are afraid to say > anything to upset the RIAA. Established artists are under contract to the major labels. -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
