Battle over Internet radio fees goes on
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 22, 2007 at 11:53am
Facing an outcry over imminent royalty fee increases for Internet radio operators, the music industry body that lobbied for the changes has attempted a “peace offering,” reports CNET.
SoundExchange, the nonprofit group that collects the fees on behalf of hundreds of major and independent record companies, said on Tuesday that it would give “small” webcasters the option of paying “below market” royalty rates on the songs they play—that is, by keeping the required royalty rates essentially the same as they are under a 2002 law called the Small Webcaster Settlement Act.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the revenue cutoff would be in determining which businesses qualify as small, and SoundExchange representatives didn’t respond to requests for clarification, says CNET. What’s more, a coalition called SaveNetRadio—which is composed of webcasters, listeners and artists—said the idea of offering privileges to companies that keep their revenue below government-set caps would stunt the growth of smaller firms and gut the Internet radio industry., the article adds. The group also argued that by broadcast radio standards, even the largest Webcasters, such as the Internet radio divisions of Yahoo and AOL, would be considered small broadcasters.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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