I apologize for the bandwidth usage of this bigass post but it cannot be helped it is TOO IMPORTANT
Taken from the Q&A Section of
http://www.savethestreams.com/Internet radio may be driven out of business within weeks by a Copyright Royalty Board decision that gives record companies a royalty rate that exceeds 100% of most webcasters' total revenues...
Are the rates really that high?
First of all, the rates webcasters pay are "per performance," meaning any time ONE listener hears ONE song (or any portion of a song), that's a "performance." If ONE listener hears ten songs, that's TEN performances. If 1000 listeners hear ten songs, that's 10,000 performances. Still with me?
The rates announced for 2006 (long story, but the licensing term is for 2006-2010, and it took this long to figure out the royalty rate, thus webcasters will pay "retroactively" for 2006) are $0.0008 per performance. Now, that's only 8/100ths of a cent, but let's do the math to see what happens.
Let's imagine a webcaster with an AVERAGE audience of 10,000 listeners (obviously, listeners come and go, and no one listens 24 hours a day, but we're talking about an average number... so sometimes there'll be lots more than 10,000 folks listening, sometimes lots less... but for math's sake, let's deal with the AVERAGE audience). Our webcaster plays 16 songs every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to an audience that averages out to be 10,000 people.
$0.0008 X 10,000 listeners X 16 songs/hr. = $128. It'll cost our imaginary webcaster $128 to play one hour of music for 10,000 people.
At the end of the day, that's $3,072 ($128 X 24 hrs./day) -- for just a single day! After a week goes by, it's $21,504 ($3,072 X 7 days/wk.). And for all of 2006, this webcaster with a steady average audience of 10,000 listeners would owe $1,121,280!! (the $3,072 X 365 days/yr.)
That takes care of 2006. For 2007, the rate increases 37.5%! So, with no audience growth, the cost of streaming music for the year would increase to $1,541,760.
And the royalty rate goes up another 28% in 2008, and another 28% in 2009, topping out at a $.0019 per performance rate in 2010 (resulting in a royalty obligation of $2,663,040 for that same audience averaging 10,000 listeners) for that year. I wish my boss gave me raises at those rates!
NOW FOR MY PART OF THIS INFO......
WHAT THE FUCK. Last time I checked the point of the fucking radio, Internet or otherwise, was to essentially serve as fucking advertising.
A way for people to get a sample of the music with out having to buy the damn album first, a way to hear something that you might not have gone out of you FuckAllDamn way to listen to otherwise.
So I ask "RECORD INDUSTRY" WHAT THE FUCK ALL BLOODY GODDAMN HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU.
You are killing one of your greatest assets with your all encompassing mindless fucking greed.
Is it not bad enough that most recording artist are lucky as hell to get even 1/4 of their fucking revenues in the first place.
Not even that how about the fact that most labels don't even give a FLYING FUCK about the actual MUSIC being made by their bands "case in point Chris Daughtry was forced to replace the members of his band 'Absent Element' when he was signed to a major label as 'Daughtry' not because they sucked but because he was shorter than them." Were sorry you guys are great and and all but HOW DARE YOU BE TALLER THAN THE STAR.....Your fired FUCK OFF."
Then our little journey winds its little way to the cost of the album itself $20 for a $0.03 chunk of plastic AND THAT WHOLE SONG AND DANCE BULLSHIT OF 'well you want to support your favorite artist don't you" REALLY PISSES ME OFF. FUCK OFF YOU BIG LABLE ASSHOLES. The bands only get around $2 AT MOST of that $20 so how about I give you my fucking cock to slurp on instead and I'll give the BAND $10-15 for their entertaining goodness to fill the air and invade my ears. Most of the "Talent agents" wouldn't know talent if it was FUCKING IN THE EYE WITH A STAINLESS STEEL PROPHYLACTIC.
ENOUGH WITH THE FUCKING GREEDY BULSHIT. hell even predominant members of the industry The Osbournes have fucking had it up to their eyeballs with the greed and have put in motion a bold example this years 'OzzFest' will instead be known as 'FreeFest' yep you read that right 'OzzFest' FOR FREE 24 CITIES 20,000 tickets per venue 480,000 tickets altogether.... FUCKING FREE. Sharon's got brass ones. fuck yes about damn time.