|
New Webcast Royalty Rates Determined - Might kill web radio in the US
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Johan (DJ Irish) |
Ok, not sure if you've been able to catch this as it it's pretty much still under the radar. Last friday the decision regarding the new Royalty Rates for web casters (i.e. Internet Radio) was announced by The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB).
The CRB rejected all the arguments made by webcasters and instead went with the recommendations of SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)
Here are the new rates, effective retroactively through the beginning of 2006:
2006 - $.0008 per play
2007 - $.0011 per play
2008 - $.0014 per play
2009 - $.0018 per play
2010 - $.0019 per play
A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays.
Previously the royalty rates were based on total income of the webcasters but that has now changed to a per play & per listener basis.
Kurt Hanson of RAIN (Radio And Internet Newsletter) made this analysis of the new rates:
| quote: | "In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour. Even adding in ancillary revenues from occasional video gateway ads, banner ads on the website, and so forth, total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.
That 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.
|
Source: RIAN Newsletter
And the fees are set to almost double within the next 4 years.
As if the previous rates wasn't prohibitive enough to run a web radio in the US these are just silly. |
|
|
| DJ Shibby |
| So we'll stream through Russian proxies. :) |
|
|
| LazFX |
Frigging Lawyers!! I hate this, but I will find other routes....
I wonder if this will affect my little piss ant streams I have?? :conf: |
|
|
| Johan (DJ Irish) |
| quote: | Originally posted by LazFX
Frigging Lawyers!! I hate this, but I will find other routes....
I wonder if this will affect my little piss ant streams I have?? :conf: |
According to the RAIN newsletter:
| quote: | | For noncommercial webcasters, the fee will be $500 per channel, for up to 159,140 ATH (aggregate tuning hours) per month. They would pay the commercial rate for all transmissions above that number. |
|
|
|
| LazFX |
| quote: | Originally posted by Johan (DJ Irish)
According to the RAIN newsletter: |
Damn......
:( |
|
|
| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Shibby
So we'll stream through Russian proxies. :) |
no , right? |
|
|
| Q5echo |
what are the costs of starting a web cast or web radio station?
meaning has it gotten to the point where anyone with a server and some bandwidth can do this with minimal investment as opposed to, say 1999 when it cost an arm and a leg?
if the demand for web radio has gone up proportional to the lowering cost of infrastructure requirements i.e. bandwidth, production costs, and hardware, isn't a increase in fees justified in copyright crazy web-world? |
|
|
| Johan (DJ Irish) |
Well, bandwidth is till a big monetary issue for a webcaster that want to have any significant number of listeners:
192kbps * 100 listeners * 24 hours/day = 2,07GB/day (if my math is correct). And this is for only 100 listeners. Many radio stations have several thousands (The DI.fm network have over 50,000 listeners during peak time for example)
Plus these fees are only for the actual streaming of the music. You still have to pay royalties to the copyright holders.
The thinking goes that the increased ad money in web radio justifies these new rates. But as Kurt Hanson points out in his Newsletter webcasters will have to surrender 100% of total earnings to even hope to meet these fees. To compare, FM stations don't have to pay any of these fees and satellite radio only have to pay 8% of their total income (according to rumors, the actual deal has not been disclosed by either party).
So, webcasters seem to get a particular bad deal. The complete argumentation for the decision will be publicly available any day now so then we'll see what the official rationale is for these fees. |
|
|
| we_R_DNA |
Screw the RIAA and the likes there of. . . honestly the RIAA just wants a piece of the pie and they are trying to turn something which doesn't cost money into a money making market . . . the problem I forsee is the innanity of what they are doing. . .
Since this is taking place, please move over to icecasts and .ogg formats for broadcasting. . . there will be more of an underground movement releasing music where the RIAA cannot touch anything and the moment they start charging broadcasting stations that utilize music in no way shape or form associated with a syndicated organization hell bent on taking people's money for the use of music, they will get a big fat lawsuit. . . .
In other words this action is going has an equall opposite reaction which has already begun with artists getting their own licenses . . . such as creative common, but I am not sure how that is associated with the RIAA. . . .
either way the production community and artist of the up coming generation need to let go of the windows/mac os X realm and move into using Linux audio Development software.
Also the RIAA needs to know that what they do is in no way shape or form protecting music what so ever. . . infact what they do is seek money for music being shared to the world through the internet. . . that alone indicates to me how sinister the organization actually is.
I'd even go as far as to say artist associated with the organization are sinster on the basis that they seek money for their works of art, yet don't seek to share their art with out some sort of payment.
This stuff really pisses me off. . Only because I have seen how the internet creates new realms of freedom only to have those realms invaded by an organization seeking profit and they had nothing to do with the creation of such new realms on the internet. . .
I HATE HAVING FREEDOM TO EXPRESS TAKEN AWAY!!!!!!!!!
YES The RIAA TAKES AWAY THE FREEDOM OF THE INTERNET TO EXPRESS OUR ENJOYMENT OF MUSIC!!!
HOW you May ASK!!??
THE RIAA SEEKS PAYMENTS FOR YOUR FREEDOM TO SHARE AND EXPRESS MUSIC.... MUSIC IS NOT AN ART FORM ANYMORE TO THE RIAA, BUT A MEANS TO PROFIT!! |
|
|
| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
what are the costs of starting a web cast or web radio station?
meaning has it gotten to the point where anyone with a server and some bandwidth can do this with minimal investment as opposed to, say 1999 when it cost an arm and a leg? |
what investment was necessary in 1999 (beyond having a 'server and some bandwidth')?
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
if the demand for web radio has gone up proportional to the lowering cost of infrastructure requirements i.e. bandwidth, production costs, and hardware, isn't a increase in fees justified in copyright crazy web-world? |
if the demand for web radio has indeed gone up, the revenues collected by webcasters should have gone up aswell, and with them, the revenue-percentage-based fees.
which leads us to the question: what is the justification for this extreme change in the way fees are calculated (which yields entirely different numbers, mind you; namely, exponentially higher numbers)? |
|
|
| Save Web Radio! |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
what are the costs of starting a web cast or web radio station?
meaning has it gotten to the point where anyone with a server and some bandwidth can do this with minimal investment as opposed to, say 1999 when it cost an arm and a leg?
if the demand for web radio has gone up proportional to the lowering cost of infrastructure requirements i.e. bandwidth, production costs, and hardware, isn't a increase in fees justified in copyright crazy web-world? |
While its true that the cost of running a station hardware and bandwidth wise has gone down since streaming radio really took off (like you said around 1999, though it does date back a bit further), the costs are still prohibitive to most people if they want to serve more than a couple dozen people.
A station like Soma.fm, say for their Groove Salad station could be paying anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 a month for bandwidth. On top of that they have to pay the license fee's for the music play on those stations and that is based off a per listener rate.
Stations like Soma run many different streams, thats a lot of money per month.
Now a lot of the station that have made it big with out commercial investment or venture capital have either been founded by people with lots of money and a passion, or they know people/companies that are willing to donate bandwidth and server space (usually the latter).
If that is the case, then license fee's still take up a majority of the operations expenditures. For non-commercial stations like Soma, this mean that they are most likely running in the red.
The current fee's are more than sufficient and continue to at least play into what SoundExchange (which is a non-profit group that represents companies that are members of the RIAA) is trying to accomplish.
It is virtually impossible for someone with out sufficient funds to break into the shoutcasting market and garner a huge listener base. The cap for fee's is 250 concurrent listeners. Most of these larger independent stations have 10 to 20 times that, some even more.
Raising these fee's effectivly creates an artificial barrier for anyone but the largest streaming operations (read Clear Channel and other large media empire radio stations that also stream their content online). There is no current need for it beyond a desire to stiffle out stations that do not play or follow the mainstream trends of music. It is as simple as that. |
|
|
|
|
