Major Label’s Proxy Has a New Scapegoat for Its Lack of Business Acumen: Internet Radio

Internet radio has mushroomed over the last few years to more than 2,500 stations. Most estimates say that 50 million people tune in at least monthly to webcasts. A big part of the draw is the eclectic programming, which recalls the golden age of anything-goes FM radio in the 70s.

But on March 2, the Copyright Royalty Board increased per-song-played royalty rates from 0.0008 to 0.0019 over the next three years—based in large part on the RIAA’s traditional Orwellian testimony about artists’ rights. That’s just one less zero to the left of the decimal, but small webcasters’ rates will be 300 to 1,200 percent higher (depending on the size of their audiences), effectively shutting down most sites.

The Save Net Radio Coalition - a grassroots organization of listeners, webcasters, record labels and artists fighting the rate hikes—calls July 15, the day the first bill is due (and retroactive to 2006), “The Day the Music Dies.”

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