TBA, Wrong, Live365 shut it down...
R
R
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
The new royalty fees, how many stations have shut down? Anybody know?
- Thread starter gregg75
- Start date
There are other platforms you could take it to, and they've been mentioned here many times.
The way I understand it, nobody is saying a small web streaming station cannot exist but rather there is not a special rate for doing so. So, anyone can start a stream, it's just the cost of doing business has gone up. If I were to look at it from an entirely business perspective, it takes a certain amount of money for Sound Exchange to 'service' or maintain an account. It is very likely there was very little money left from the small streamer rate that actually went to the artists unless Sound Exchange lost dollars on handling the accounts. That's just a guess. I don't know how they operate.
My Dad dealt with the mail order division (pre-internet days) for a fairly large seller of books. His problem was another division set the publisher's list price on books. He was always having to argue for a higher price. After you paid labor, mailers and such, it cost them somewhere around $7 per order to get it to the person that ordered it. Many times he was stuck with a loss on small orders and was always trying to think of ways to get order size increased to absorb the loss of those who purchased only one item that usually represented a loss. If you think of every step and how checks and balances have to be maintained, it is easy to see how the cost can be so high. I suspect Sound Exchange had difficulty pulling much cash from each small web streamer to go in the account to be paid to the artists. On bigger accounts, the numbers work much easier.
I do not see why the musicians that have small followings cannot be played by larger streamers. I would think if they are producing good product and production values, they could make it on some playlists. Sure, if the small streamer would always play them, that might add up but from my research many streamers have so few listeners it just didn't matter. I'm saying that in my research, lots of small streamers struggled to maintain much more than a fraction of a person listening at any given time meaning when a song played, maybe .7 or .8 people heard it. Sure, 100 streamers might be playing it, but geographically speaking, they were from all over, not significant enough to affect number of people showing up to watch the band live at any given venue. That's not to say the small streamer was meaningless, but rather maybe not as significant as we want to think in every circumstance. I'm sure there are exceptions but exceptions are just that.
Thus, it appears at this point, it is not that the small streamers were forced off the web but rather that the cost of being a streamer increased and the smaller streamer chose to shut down.
Now, the $64 question: how do you monetize this and increase awareness. Both are the real issues for the little guy. If anyone can create a working plan other than listeners paying (as in the same way of raising revenue over the air radio uses), you have a million dollar idea.
My Dad dealt with the mail order division (pre-internet days) for a fairly large seller of books. His problem was another division set the publisher's list price on books. He was always having to argue for a higher price. After you paid labor, mailers and such, it cost them somewhere around $7 per order to get it to the person that ordered it. Many times he was stuck with a loss on small orders and was always trying to think of ways to get order size increased to absorb the loss of those who purchased only one item that usually represented a loss. If you think of every step and how checks and balances have to be maintained, it is easy to see how the cost can be so high. I suspect Sound Exchange had difficulty pulling much cash from each small web streamer to go in the account to be paid to the artists. On bigger accounts, the numbers work much easier.
I do not see why the musicians that have small followings cannot be played by larger streamers. I would think if they are producing good product and production values, they could make it on some playlists. Sure, if the small streamer would always play them, that might add up but from my research many streamers have so few listeners it just didn't matter. I'm saying that in my research, lots of small streamers struggled to maintain much more than a fraction of a person listening at any given time meaning when a song played, maybe .7 or .8 people heard it. Sure, 100 streamers might be playing it, but geographically speaking, they were from all over, not significant enough to affect number of people showing up to watch the band live at any given venue. That's not to say the small streamer was meaningless, but rather maybe not as significant as we want to think in every circumstance. I'm sure there are exceptions but exceptions are just that.
Thus, it appears at this point, it is not that the small streamers were forced off the web but rather that the cost of being a streamer increased and the smaller streamer chose to shut down.
Now, the $64 question: how do you monetize this and increase awareness. Both are the real issues for the little guy. If anyone can create a working plan other than listeners paying (as in the same way of raising revenue over the air radio uses), you have a million dollar idea.
Small artists are available on all platforms. But listeners don't know they exist.
The CRB killed the SWA, not Sound Exchange. Sound Exchange never told the CRB they wanted the SWA to go away.
R
R
No one killed anything. The SWA expired. There was an expiration date on the agreement. That date was the end of 2015.
Regardless, the lack of a SWA is actually just as costly, if not more, because now the expense has shifted to enforcement of keeping small webcasters off the air or at least geoblocking USA listeners. As we all know, Sony is already going after Radionomy...
R
R
Radionomy is partly owned by Sony competitor Universal Music. And the suit is against Radionomy, not any of the stations.
The lack of SWA has nothing to do with the suit.
Last edited:
Company, stations... It doesn't matter.
There are two things I simply cannot stand...
1. Monopolies
2. Repetitive naysayers
Neither of those erode my faith.
R
There are two things I simply cannot stand...
1. Monopolies
2. Repetitive naysayers
Neither of those erode my faith.
R
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
Robert, with all due respect because you've been very polite about it, you keep making errors in your understanding of facts and it's making this go on much longer than it needed to.
Let me also say that I can easily see how confusing this matter has been to the small webcaster, and especially to the listeners of streams which have now shut down.
With that in mind, let me try to clarify some of the obvious "facts" that you apparently misheard, misinterpreted, or otherwise misunderstood, in the hope that we can move forward without having to stop every two or three posts to correct something that was said but which was not factual.
1. The SWA (Small Webcasters Act) was not "killed" by anyone other than those who agreed to it in the first place. It had an expiration date of December 31, 2015 on it all along. There was no provision for it to be extended and no one made any concrete moves to either extend it or negotiate a replacement for it as that date approached.
2. The amount of money the music industry may have lost from all those flat-rate webcaster fees is more than offset by the per-play fees which they are receiving from the remaining streaming players. In any event, it isn't about the amount of money, it is about the music being paid for every time a set of ears is listening. While their PR flacks would never admit it, the industry never liked the idea of flat-fee small webcasting.
3. The large webacsters do receive a benefit from all the little fish being shut down. It's similar to the benefit a "big box" store gets when a mom-and-pop operation shuts down in their town. If you have to go somewhere to get what you want and the little, locally-owned source has boarded up the windows, you hold your nose and go to the corporate monolith anchoring the shopping center down the road. I know you don't like it, but facts are not always things you like hearing.
4. Among those who did not kill the SWA was Live365. And why would they have wanted to do so, when their entire business model was based on revenue from small webcasters? Hell, they SHUT DOWN because of this ... to suggest that they shut down the SWA is suggesting that they committed business suicide.
5. Any additional enforcement expense is so minimal as to be imagined. All the streaming hosts know the rules, they collect the fees from their remaining customers, and that's that. For someone to go it alone without a service requires an Internet connection and computer equipment far more robust than 99.99% of home users have. That's a small enough number that no one will care about enforcement.
6. As pointed out, the Sony-Radionomy lawsuit has absolutely nothing to do with the webcasters. Your source must be terribly wrong.
Robert, the Internet makes it very easy to disprove arguments that are erroneous, based on opinion rather than fact, or otherwise flawed. It has nothing to do with your personal "erosion of faith". You simply are not going to win this argument by continuing to make the statements you have.
I'll buy you a white flag if you'll just, for the love of all things holy, STOP.
Happy Easter, if you are of a Christian faith. Ignore the wish as being non-PC if you aren't.
Let me also say that I can easily see how confusing this matter has been to the small webcaster, and especially to the listeners of streams which have now shut down.
With that in mind, let me try to clarify some of the obvious "facts" that you apparently misheard, misinterpreted, or otherwise misunderstood, in the hope that we can move forward without having to stop every two or three posts to correct something that was said but which was not factual.
1. The SWA (Small Webcasters Act) was not "killed" by anyone other than those who agreed to it in the first place. It had an expiration date of December 31, 2015 on it all along. There was no provision for it to be extended and no one made any concrete moves to either extend it or negotiate a replacement for it as that date approached.
2. The amount of money the music industry may have lost from all those flat-rate webcaster fees is more than offset by the per-play fees which they are receiving from the remaining streaming players. In any event, it isn't about the amount of money, it is about the music being paid for every time a set of ears is listening. While their PR flacks would never admit it, the industry never liked the idea of flat-fee small webcasting.
3. The large webacsters do receive a benefit from all the little fish being shut down. It's similar to the benefit a "big box" store gets when a mom-and-pop operation shuts down in their town. If you have to go somewhere to get what you want and the little, locally-owned source has boarded up the windows, you hold your nose and go to the corporate monolith anchoring the shopping center down the road. I know you don't like it, but facts are not always things you like hearing.
4. Among those who did not kill the SWA was Live365. And why would they have wanted to do so, when their entire business model was based on revenue from small webcasters? Hell, they SHUT DOWN because of this ... to suggest that they shut down the SWA is suggesting that they committed business suicide.
5. Any additional enforcement expense is so minimal as to be imagined. All the streaming hosts know the rules, they collect the fees from their remaining customers, and that's that. For someone to go it alone without a service requires an Internet connection and computer equipment far more robust than 99.99% of home users have. That's a small enough number that no one will care about enforcement.
6. As pointed out, the Sony-Radionomy lawsuit has absolutely nothing to do with the webcasters. Your source must be terribly wrong.
Robert, the Internet makes it very easy to disprove arguments that are erroneous, based on opinion rather than fact, or otherwise flawed. It has nothing to do with your personal "erosion of faith". You simply are not going to win this argument by continuing to make the statements you have.
I'll buy you a white flag if you'll just, for the love of all things holy, STOP.
Happy Easter, if you are of a Christian faith. Ignore the wish as being non-PC if you aren't.
K.M.,
With all due respect being returned, I feel as though this thread's discussion pretty much had come to an end until you made your previous post.
I will admit on the first error only. The rest of what you have said is more of an opinion and as I already said we will have to agree to disagree. Never the less I will address a couple of your comments.
4. Who said Live365 killed / attempted to kill the SWA? Because I certainly didn't say that nor would I ever say it as I was with them as a broadcaster until their shutdown. I agree it would be business suicide for Live365 to attempt an end to the SWA.
6. All I said was Sony was suing Radionomy. How that turned into "this is related to that" was not my intention. I only brought it up as an example of how screwed up things are as a whole.
For all practical purposes, I believe this thread went on too long because it became a back-and-forth of the same arguments by both sides. I was attempting to do my part to end my share of that by trying not to reply to responses I felt I had already addressed.
R
With all due respect being returned, I feel as though this thread's discussion pretty much had come to an end until you made your previous post.
I will admit on the first error only. The rest of what you have said is more of an opinion and as I already said we will have to agree to disagree. Never the less I will address a couple of your comments.
4. Who said Live365 killed / attempted to kill the SWA? Because I certainly didn't say that nor would I ever say it as I was with them as a broadcaster until their shutdown. I agree it would be business suicide for Live365 to attempt an end to the SWA.
6. All I said was Sony was suing Radionomy. How that turned into "this is related to that" was not my intention. I only brought it up as an example of how screwed up things are as a whole.
For all practical purposes, I believe this thread went on too long because it became a back-and-forth of the same arguments by both sides. I was attempting to do my part to end my share of that by trying not to reply to responses I felt I had already addressed.
R
Last edited:
Regardless, no one is stopping you from restarting your station on a new platform.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
In post #21, I can now see that you replied to TheBigA's post #19. But if you go back and look at the juxtaposition of posts you will see that the post could be interpreted as being a reply to #20. I appreciate the clarification but suggest you perhaps need to be a bit clearer when firing off such short replies. (Or do like the rest of us and selectively quote the relevant portion of a post that you are replying to.)
Your post #27 puts the phrase "Sony is already going after Radionomy" immediately after verbiage about small webcasters. Again, a post with too few words to be clear, and open to misinterpretation; since I have no idea what was in your mind when you posted, I have to attach what I think is your meaning to your posts as written.
We're not, contrary to popular belief, mindreaders. I'm sure you knew what you meant, but I hope you can see that it wasn't obvious to everyone.
Last edited:
Ad everyone knows that the terms of service with Radionomy protects the small webcasters from suits from record labels.
This particular story relates more to YouTube rather than internet radio, but the article is an example of the music industry's argument about how their music is being used:
http://rainnews.com/musicians-petition-copyright-office-over-dmca/
One potential example of safe harbor is the Radionomy TOS that protects webcasters from label lawsuits. Because those stations are user generated content.
http://rainnews.com/musicians-petition-copyright-office-over-dmca/
One potential example of safe harbor is the Radionomy TOS that protects webcasters from label lawsuits. Because those stations are user generated content.
Started this thread and then left for a couple months. Yes you guys have behaved great and the discussion is good.
I am also with StreamLicensing but am now paying 3x the royalty fees I was paying last year. As someone said the big guys want to shut down the mom and pop stations and capture their listeners.......and I do believe that.
I am also with StreamLicensing but am now paying 3x the royalty fees I was paying last year. As someone said the big guys want to shut down the mom and pop stations and capture their listeners.......and I do believe that.
If by "the big guys" you mean Sony & Universal, I agree. But if you're talking about radio companies, you're wrong. Radio companies have nothing to gain from capturing your listeners. But Sony & Universal are trying to buy streaming platforms so they can own the content and the platform.
Here's an article about StreamLicensing, mentioned in this thread:
http://rainnews.com/in-the-new-era-of-small-webcasting-streamlicensing-builds-tech-to-survive/
http://rainnews.com/in-the-new-era-of-small-webcasting-streamlicensing-builds-tech-to-survive/
- Status