For those that have enjoyed the fun of setting up their own stream of their favorite music on the web, the party may very well be over.
There’s a term that perked up on the Internet back in 1998 or 1999. The term was Webcasting. I don’t know who really came up with the term. It may have been Alex Bennett, Richard Hart, Al Gore, or Bill Gates. I really don’t know who came up with it but it’s been tagged next to my name quite a few times and I hold it dear. I treasure the term and I try to keep up with everything involving it.
Well, to make a very long story short the major record labels and our government are fucking the little guy. All of it is in pursuit of the all might dollar. It has nothing to do with people, artistic integrity, or anything you can really find in the original constitution. It’s all about the Benjamin’s folks.
You see, Webcasting has been tagged on to something else that has gained a lot of popularity in the past two years: the Internet Radio Station. I’m not talking about your local AM or FM you find on the dial that is also sending out a "stream" of music, I’m talking about the 40 year old guy in Vermont who likes to play nothing but his personal collection of the sounds of the 70’s, or the guy in California who likes to let everyone listen to his collection of Goth/Industrial music from the 80’s. You can find the biggest example of this over at Live365.com. People who just stream music for the love of music because radio has taken a gigantic crap and is about as diverse with its music playlist’s as [insert witty metaphor here].
Now, back in the hay day of the Internet there was this mass perception about all of the money that was floating out there on the Internet. To some degree I almost think that people actually perceived that each electrical impulse and every data packet that was
sent through the Internet also had a large wad of $20’s attached to it. Start up "Dot Coms" got lots of money from a lot of now very upset investors because the Internet was the "new economy" and everyone wanted a piece
of it. That right there is the first sign of the beginning of the end. Economy implies money and everyone wants money, so they are going to want to be part of the economy. If the economy has no rules set up though it is going to fail because economies don’t work if they don’t have a working model.
So,everyone perceives the new economy and they want a part of it. Suddenly those that have lots of money start to perceive of this money that they aren’t a part of yet and instead of seeing it for what it is they spend their time worrying about why they aren’t getting a part of it and actually start to believe that they are actually LOOSING money because they aren’t part of it. Great examples of this can be sighted from the big Fox drive to make sure that no web site had any semblance of any part of their intellectual property, be it the X-Files, The Simpson’s, King of the Hill or anything else. Actual Cease & Desist letters went out to make people take intellectual property down. Paramount followed suit with Start Trek sites. Suddenly there’s a snowball effect and everything goes to hell. The strange thing though is that these sites actually supported and promoted the very product that the major company was seeking to protect and secure.
The next set of people to step up to the plate after many restless nights filled with the visions of hundred dollar bills flying out the
window were the agencies that represent commercial talent. These are the people that do voice over work for radio commercials both on a local and national level. The way these people got paranoid was because radio stations all jumped on the band wagon of setting up a live stream of their terrestrial radio signal that anyone with a radio can get for free. If they can send it out into the air after paying fees and licenses and such, why should the Internet be any different, right? Wrong. The talent (or their organization) viewed it like this:
The talent is paid for a radio spot that airs in certain markets and gets a fee based on usage. If the same spot also airs through the Internet the commercial is reaching the public still, just through a new venue, and the talent should also be paid for that usage as well. Did this garner lots of revenue to this agency? Nope. Within minutes of the decision just about every single radio
station that had a live stream going out to the web shut down their web servers and told everyone that the party was over. (To date, I believe Clear Channel is the only company that streams their stations content over the web after adopting software that takes out commercials during webcasts.)
While all this is going on, the MP3 revolution has been taking off and the Artists and Record Labels are freaking out over programs such as Napster. I don’t think I really need to go into this one in detail, right? Guy has CD, guy rips CD, people all download music, artist and label only make money on one sale and perceive lost revenue. ’nuff said.
The latest bit of complete and utter nonsense comes from the Recording Industry of American Artists (RIAA), the Library of Congress (LoC), and the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP). You see, the RIAA is upset because music is going out over the "webwaves" from people all over the world just out of the love of playing music. (Almost all the other stations aren’t streaming now, remember?) The RIAA wants to make sure that the artists and their labels get just compensation for the air play of the copyrighted music. That’s right, they saw the money just burning away in the public fire and they wanted to rescue it from the flames and put it in their pockets. They claim that they aren’t out to shut down the little guy, just get money from the major corporations such as Yahoo and AOL and the like. In the end they screw everyone though.
It isn’t really fair either. You see, the radio industry for years has had to pay a fee to BMI and SESAC for the music they play. They don’t really have to pay for every song that they play and don’t have to pay for every listener that can hear there station. They just pay a license fee that gives them the ability to play music. This happens because the radio company benefits from having listeners to their station who might buy from sponsors while the artist gets theoretical compensation through the licensing service as well as potential sales from the exposure they get from air play. It all boils down to one back scratching the other so everyone gets along fine. That radio stations pay their fees, they make their money on ad sales, and the artist gets paid from album sales.
For some reason the Internet doesn’t have to actually play by the same rules. With the Internet they can go after a per song and a per listener fee. They can do this retroactively back to October of 1998. Why? Because it is the Internet, it wasn’t defined, and they have dollar signs in their eyes bigger then the Hindenburgh… and it’s going to end just as pretty.
You see, the home enthusiast and other people of the like aren’t really doing this to make a profit (although in theory Live365.com is but I’m sure their revenue isn’t that high), as I said before they are just doing it for the fun of it. Out of their love and passion most list what artist is playing, what the song title is, and even what album it is from. To be honest, they are actually giving a greater promotional push to the recording artists and label because they are delivering even more information then most traditional
terrestrial broadcast methods can. Hell, I had a friend that went so far as to create a program that would not only give you all that information, but it would also provide a link back to CDNow that would allow you to buy the album instantly. When was the last time traditional terrestrial radio could do that? Heck, there is tons of statistical information to show that currently CD sales are at an all time high, even in light of our recent recession. Can it be partly because of the Internet Webcaster? Just might have been. If the current LoC decision holds time may tell very quickly.
Now, you might be thinking, "Well Will, why not just play up and coming artists who aren’t signed who give you permission to play their music since it is royalty free that way?" I’ll tell you why: because under the new laws it will take so much work to prove that you aren’t making money playing this artists, that you do in fact have permission to play their music, and the music is in fact royalty free. Imagine having to get a signed piece of paper from every artist you want to play saying that it is all right with their band, their management, their label, their attorneys, their mothers, and their second cousins twice removed that you can
play their music and it is royalty free. That’s what it will be like to try and play independent music.
Once again we see that greed and ignorance can potentially ruin what we, the people, enjoy. The people that we have
elected and put in office are ignoring the out cry of the masses and once again Democracy gets a massive slap in the face. People have, in essence, been providing a greater promotional push for the recording industry while being able to enjoy the thrill and excitement of being their own radio station and playing all the music they really want to hear. Now they are being punished for that, and it is our tax dollars that helped make it happen.
Personally, I say turn off your radios and don’t buy CD’s folks. Don’t support the RIAA in any way, shape or form if you were a fan of Internet Radio and if you are going to miss it once it is gone. Let the RIAA and every other damned organization see that when they’ve got a good thing they should really see the forest for the trees instead of just seeing all the green. If your favorite Webcaster takes their signal off the air and it affects the bottom line on their sales I’d be interested to see what Washington does next.
Damn the man, FIGHT THE POWER!
-WW