> With the new streaming fees from Sound whatever, cost to many > streamers are going to be running 300% of income on some of > these folks. Streaming may go away.
Nope. All it will do is drive them underground. We all know about pirate radio. It can be heard by anyone who cares to tune around. That also can interfere with licensed stations. A pirate stream doesn't interfere with anything and can't be found without some serious probing. The IP address would be hard enough to find. Add in the port number to the search and it's now 65536 times more difficult to discover. What the fees will do is kill off the streams of licensed (and traceable) stations. Streaming is also *very* cheap and easy to do. I run my own stream with my desired music for my own use, sans commercials, promos and annoying announcers. It's at a private address. If the RIAA were to stumble upon it I would consider it hacking and file a DCMA complaint against them. There's no way in snowed-over Hades I'd pay them 1.9 cents per song played per listener. My only direct costs are the electricity required to run the encoder and the server computers. Since I need them for other uses, the real added cost is zilch. Streams also do not have any governmental licensing, so there is no danger of fines or jail. Picture a stream hosted by a country that does not recognize the RIAA or it's overseas counterparts. Would the music industry have any way of attacking a sovereign country? Say North Korea decides to jump into stream hosting to gain outside income... The RIAA is losing the battle against hackers. It's only a matter of time before the streams take off as well. Eventually the NAB will get fed up with the RIAA/SoundExchange extortion and fight them. Picture a music industry rep calling a station to see if they'll add a new song and being transferred to the sales department. They would then rightfully be charged for the publicity gained by playing that song. Or picture an NAB-wide "Don't Buy Music" promotional event. Between the lousy publicity that the RIAA has generated by suing grandmothers and elementary school kids, and the bad feelings the broadcast industry has about SoundExchange, this could easily happen. They think CD sales are bad now? Imagine if an honest and very public campaign encouraged people to not buy music. Musicians are also screwed over royally by the RIAA. For every dollar the RIAA/SoundExchange extorts from broadcasters, musicians get pennies at best. They really need a better way to be compensated. Way OT, so I'll shut up now and go listen to my stream and calm down. (sigh) Craig Healy Providence, RI _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
