AMERICAN CAPITALISM vs. INTERNET

AMERICAN CAPITALISM vs. INTERNET

VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR [click for more articles]

Web radio is toast
Analyis RIAA and political cronies sink promising technology

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.