Web radio is toast
IT NOW LOOKS CERTAIN that the RIAA and its tame political puppets will kill off Web radio.
Despite the fact it is incredibly popular, web radio stations, such as Pandora are about to be slammed with a royalty bill for music which is so crippling that the industry will never walk again.
Despite more than a million listeners daily, Pandora is coming close to pulling the plug because the RIAA and its cronies have ordered that the station pay more than double the per-song performance royalty that other Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies.
This means that Pandora will have to pay 70 per cent of its projected revenue of $25 million to keep the RIAA, or in this case its government-appointed monopoly enforcers Soundexchange, off its back. Small webcasters claim that the demanded dosh would be 100 to 300 per cent of annual revenue, which Soundexchange believes is fair.
While politicians are trying to broker a last minute deal to save the industry it seems that the record companies are saying put up or shut down.
The final curtain for Web radio just goes to show how out of touch the music industry is about where technology is headed. Forcing Pandora to close will lose it about $10 million and close a potential venue for pushing its latest flaccid beat combo tracks.
SoundExchange claims higher royalties for Internet radio because it says musicians deserve a bigger cut of Internet radio profits. But it strangely ignores the fact that if an Internet radio shuts then musicians will not get anything.
SoundExchange claims that it the Internet Radio stations fault that they have not tried to work out ways to make money out of playing the songs. It claims they should try things like better advertising, forgetting that Internet users don't want to see too much of that.
Other fears are that the independent and new musicians will lose an avenue to promote their music. At the moment a musician can stick their content online radio and hope the exposure will attract sales at their web-site.
Now the radio station will have to pay royalties to SoundExchange even though the artist has not signed a contract with the organisation. Any cash SoundExchange collects will not go to the artist but will be saved up to give an RIAA executive a holiday somewhere hot with their secretary.
Soon the only place where Internet radio will survive is on illegal sites in foreign parts where governments are brave enough to ignore the Recording Company mafiaa. Still with the US government on both sides of the house taking bribes from the entertainment business in election year, we can guarantee that such nations will be dubbed terrorists and troops sent in any day now. ยต
L'Inq
Washington
Post
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Another reason for people to pirate music. I hope last fm doesn't go the same way. All because of some greedy executives want to keep pushing there obviously broken business model.
I like that the music industry still has the balls to say "It's your fault things are going tits up, you should have found a way to make more money" while simultaneously urging politicians that they need protection and monopolistic dominance because... um... they aren't making enough money...

Now if only they would tell other manufacturers that their sales are down because they've lost touch of their market and strangle innovation creating dull cloned products then the circle of confusion they're trapped within will be complete!



well ive just been to pandora and this is their welcome :-

"Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative. 

We believe that you are in United Kingdom (your IP address appears to be 86.xxx.xxx.3). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com 

If you are a paid subscriber, please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com and we will issue a pro-rated refund to the credit card you used to sign up. If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you."

jeeeeeeeeeeez whats the matter with these greedy xxxxholes, dont they realise, the dumb motherxxxxxxs are shooting themselves in the foot ffs grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr !!!!!!
I hope they do shut down. I hope that any and all online radio station worthy of listening to goes under. Why? It's the only way that people will revolt against the RIAA.

What stopped people from buying SUVs in the US? Was it the threat of $4 gas, first issued two or three years ago? Or was it when gas ACTUALLY became $4? (For our home viewers the answer is the latter).

Most people don't fight the RIAA on moral grounds, or anybody else. It takes literally siezing their lifestyle and ripping out shreds of it before they sit up and complain.
Well that explains the lack of my online album sales in 2007. The RIAA and Soundechange aren't my friends, apparently. What is an independent musician to do?
Many artists are following the "independent" trend.
If there's no unsupervized net radio - they'll have nowhere to go, but back to the labels.

shutting down everything but RIAA approved sources for listening to music will surely quash that trend.
I think the whole democracy thing has long gone! The RIAA needs to go and how it still functions is beyond me, aren't there laws for the stupid things they do like suing dead people and there spouse and people with out computers and fabricating evidence? I think the people needs to stop buying music in any form for a month or two and demand that the RIAA be gone cant you yanks get a clue? But anything I guess yanks getting a clue is somewhat of a stretch lol
People just should use something like www.musicovery.com . It is web2.0 and there is a way to buy the music ;)
Maybe Troubles in Software enuciation. If Pandora Charged Nickel for Each Individual song in each persons' individual permanent account, non ?spawnable private station, which you could replay only your small group of BOUGHT music, thats $5 once for station of 100 tunes, Picke'm Ur Self. One Free Play. Music service then could mix in sidebar, sales & deeper messaging into package & have readership. Maysome make bigger station capture, Let em move individual songs around into unique lists, repeats, stations, & one creates full library of potential at reasoned one time cost, with server farm virtually owing output to consumers time.
Yet if ANY Cost is Involved to Consumer, i am Sure it Will fail. excepting most accepted, telephone, which is poor value for many, per unit of useage or cable, which is foot short of internet, yet far beyond AM tunescapade. Still quite ?Free Item, As I Recall.
thomas stewart von Drashek
This will help not known to the public musicians to get onto million listeners arena and it will help to end Big-4 content monopoly!