I really enjoyed listening to The Wave on my computer as I live in Chicago. A few months ago the station has stopped providing on line listening. I understood it had something to do with license costs. Not sure why small stations have online listening availability and this station doesn't. Can someone explain this to me? Does it cost to be listed on I tune radio or just to have a listening button on the web site?
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Wavv
- Thread starter Dr Wayne
- Start date
Commercial broadcast stations have to pay "performance fees" to Sound Exchange. It is federally mandated in the USA. The fees are based on how many people listen to each song, and must be reported that way. Besides being a huge pain in the anterior regions to figure out, it can be quite expensive to do. The Sound Exchange rate for this year is 0.23 cents per song, per listener. It doesn't sound like much but it really adds up. Let's say you play 13 songs per hour 24/7, or 312 songs per day. If you have an average of 200 listeners over that same 24 hours, that is 62,400 times $0.0023 which equals $143.52 per day. That still doesn't sound too bad, but that is $52,384.80 per year. Keep in mind that the same broadcaster also pays additional feed to ASCAP, SESAC and BMI for their streaming activity. They must also pay for the actual bandwidth used and whatever it costs to file accounting reports to Sound Exchange so they can pay their royalties. Sound Exchange does not send a simple bill, they expect the broadcaster to do the accounting and paper work. That costs money.
Now to pay for this, hopefully it could be ad supported. The problem is there just aren't many advertisers who would pay enough to reach only 200 listeners to make it worthwhile. Keep in mind that most Standards stations are small and rely on local advertisers to stay in the air. If you are not in the advertisers immediate market area, the fact you're hearing their ad is of little value to them. It is unlikely you will ever patronize their business.
Most over-the-air radio stations that stream do it as a service to their local listeners, and do it at a financial loss. For example, it can help keep them stay tuned in while they are at work. That can be a plus, but if the listening audience ever gets big enough, especially if most of it is out of market, it becomes financially unsustainable. That's especially true for small over the air broadcasters which are very often hand-to-mouth operations. Bigger stations can frequently absorb the cost. (But the big corporations seem to have a nasty habit of going bankrupt, to correct for their excess spending habits.) The fee structure needs to change, but it is up to Congress to do that. Until there is a fee structure for streaming that is fair for all parties, I suspect you will see more and more over the air broadcasters turning their streams off.
Now to pay for this, hopefully it could be ad supported. The problem is there just aren't many advertisers who would pay enough to reach only 200 listeners to make it worthwhile. Keep in mind that most Standards stations are small and rely on local advertisers to stay in the air. If you are not in the advertisers immediate market area, the fact you're hearing their ad is of little value to them. It is unlikely you will ever patronize their business.
Most over-the-air radio stations that stream do it as a service to their local listeners, and do it at a financial loss. For example, it can help keep them stay tuned in while they are at work. That can be a plus, but if the listening audience ever gets big enough, especially if most of it is out of market, it becomes financially unsustainable. That's especially true for small over the air broadcasters which are very often hand-to-mouth operations. Bigger stations can frequently absorb the cost. (But the big corporations seem to have a nasty habit of going bankrupt, to correct for their excess spending habits.) The fee structure needs to change, but it is up to Congress to do that. Until there is a fee structure for streaming that is fair for all parties, I suspect you will see more and more over the air broadcasters turning their streams off.
I listen to a standards station that is owned by a man who was a DJ on the station when he was younger, came back to town for some reason and ended up buying it. I asked him once for the name of a song he had played and he didn't know. I asked if he had to keep a record of songs played for the payment of royalties (most of the music comes from Dial Global so it wouldn't be that hard) and he said that he only had to do that once a month or something like that. It sounds like he didn't have to pay for every song he played, but just the songs he played on that one day each month.
And he does stream.
And he does stream.
Perhaps he has been able to qualify as a "Small Broadcaster." This is the category for Broadcasters which have low online listenership, accruing fewer than 27,777 aggregate tuning hours annually. That's the equivalent of approximately 70 listeners, each one listening for one hour a day. That is very low listenership and nobody is going to pay to advertise to such a low number.
If he is a LPFM or other non-commercial broadcaster, he can pay a blanket fee of $500 per year for music licensing (plus ASCAP, SESAC and BMI royalties). If he would like to skip song reporting to Sound Exchange (and who wouldn't) he can pay an additional $100 per year to have that waived. It's not all easy though. There is a threshold of number of listener minutes. If you exceed that, it gets quite expensive very quickly. He may still have to do an occasional music audit for one of the licensing agencies, but that is usually just for two or three days and they let you know way in advance what days that will be. It is relatively easy.
There are similar deals for Internet only broadcasters, that start out fairly reasonably, but if you become successful, they can be quite expensive as well. It seems they don't like to encourage success.
If you are a commercial broadcaster, all bets are off, and what I told you is the law of the land. If you have any questions about the rates, or think I'm blowing smoke, they can be found at: http://www.soundexchange.com/service-provider/rates/commercial-webcaster/
If he is a LPFM or other non-commercial broadcaster, he can pay a blanket fee of $500 per year for music licensing (plus ASCAP, SESAC and BMI royalties). If he would like to skip song reporting to Sound Exchange (and who wouldn't) he can pay an additional $100 per year to have that waived. It's not all easy though. There is a threshold of number of listener minutes. If you exceed that, it gets quite expensive very quickly. He may still have to do an occasional music audit for one of the licensing agencies, but that is usually just for two or three days and they let you know way in advance what days that will be. It is relatively easy.
There are similar deals for Internet only broadcasters, that start out fairly reasonably, but if you become successful, they can be quite expensive as well. It seems they don't like to encourage success.
If you are a commercial broadcaster, all bets are off, and what I told you is the law of the land. If you have any questions about the rates, or think I'm blowing smoke, they can be found at: http://www.soundexchange.com/service-provider/rates/commercial-webcaster/
He's a commercial broadcaster serving the community. There are lots of local commercials, though fewer of those when the Dial Global satellite format is being used.
I found recently that KFMB-FM San Diego, a Jack station, only allows listeners in Southern California to tune into the audio stream. I suppose it's worth it for them to install that technology so they limit listening to only inside their sales area, thus keeping the cost of streaming low.
Meanwhile the #1 station in Philadelphia, WBEB, an Adult Contemporary station, stopped streaming its audio a couple of years ago. I guess they are willing to suffer the loss of on-line listeners as a protest to the high cost of steaming. So they're losing out on people who either can't get the FM signal in a high-rise office or residential building, or those who don't have a radio on their desk and choose to listen on their computer. WBEB is one of the few remaining major stations in a large market to be individually owned. The big players, Clear Channel, CBS, Cumulus, etc. all audio stream.
BTW, KFMB-FM is owned by a small company, Mid-West Television. WAVV Naples-Ft. Myers is also owned by a small company, Alpine Broadcasting. Maybe the big boys make package deals that keep the cost of streaming on each station low, something WBEB, KFMB-FM and WAVV can't do.
Meanwhile the #1 station in Philadelphia, WBEB, an Adult Contemporary station, stopped streaming its audio a couple of years ago. I guess they are willing to suffer the loss of on-line listeners as a protest to the high cost of steaming. So they're losing out on people who either can't get the FM signal in a high-rise office or residential building, or those who don't have a radio on their desk and choose to listen on their computer. WBEB is one of the few remaining major stations in a large market to be individually owned. The big players, Clear Channel, CBS, Cumulus, etc. all audio stream.
BTW, KFMB-FM is owned by a small company, Mid-West Television. WAVV Naples-Ft. Myers is also owned by a small company, Alpine Broadcasting. Maybe the big boys make package deals that keep the cost of streaming on each station low, something WBEB, KFMB-FM and WAVV can't do.
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