RIAA, US Congress plot the end of independent Internet radio

Here are two posts from Boing Boing and an arti­cle from Newsweek that describe what may hap­pen n May 15 if the US Con­gress doesn’t act soon.

The short story: the RIAA (Record­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica) wants to col­lect roy­al­ties for every recorded song played on Inter­net radio sta­tions. The old rates were cal­cu­lated on each Inter­net station’s rev­enue if the sta­tion was a small operation.

The new roy­alty rates are on a per-song, per-listener basis, and are high enough to drive most of the small and inde­pen­dent Inter­net radio sites out of busi­ness on May 15. On that day, sta­tions will be retroac­tively charged for the roy­al­ties owed since Jan­u­ary 1, 2006.

Approx­i­mately 72 mil­lion Amer­i­cans lis­ten to an inter­net radio sta­tion each month.

Tagged as: copyright, music, radio, USA