The skip limit is required for lastfm radio to be in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
In contrast with on-demand music services such as Rhapsody, companies that stream music as radio channels do not need to get the agreement of the copyright holders before playing their music. They do have to pay royalties and abide by certain rules such as in any 3-hour period, they can broadcast: * No more than 3 songs from one album; no more than 2 played consecutively * No more than 4 songs from a set/compilation; no more than 3 played consecutively * No more than 4 recorded songs by the same artist etc The DMCA act also prevents listeners of radio services from being able to pause/resume within tracks, and mandates an hourly skip limit. In the context of the internet, music services that introduce "on-demand" features into their service are not considered to be radio anymore, and must receive permission from copyright holders to play their music. Thus every single track available in Rhapsody requires them to have a deal in place with the owner of the sound recording (typically a label, sometimes an artist/their company) and the owner of the publishing rights (usually a publishing company, and mostly administered by The Harry Fox Agency, an arm of the NMPA). Without those deals in place, Rhapsody would be violating copyright law. The only exception to obtaining such explicit permissions is radio service, which can play any music without permission of music owners, but then it must abide by rules stated above. -- y360 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ y360's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10150 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=50296 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
