After many years of struggling to stay alive, have internet radio stations based in the United States been dealt a death blow by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board?
It appears that the Board’s March 2 adoption of the royalty payment schedule put forth by SoundExchange, a performance royalty collection agency created by the RIAA, will do exactly that—end U.S.-based Internet radio.
The new royalty rate is retroactive to 2006, and represents a 250 percent increase over the .0007 per performance rate established by the 1995 Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act and its 1998 amendments. For many Internet radio stations, which have already closed out their 2006 financial year, the new rate represents a major burden.
According to the Radio and Internet Newsletter: “RAIN has learned the rates that the Board has decided on, effective retroactively through the beginning of 2006.
2006 - $.0008 per performance
2007 - $.0011 per performance
2008 - $.0014 per performance
2009 - $.0018 per performance
2010 - $.0019 per performance
The minimum fee is $500 per channel per year.
Because a typical Internet radio station plays about 16 songs an hour, that's a royalty obligation in 2006 of about 1.28 cents per listener-hour.... total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.”
“We’ve done everything right, we’ve paid all of our fees, and they are still coming at us like we’re pirates,” said Pam McClusky, program manager of the Internet based traditional country radio station, Ram Radio.
“As it stands right now, this effectively takes Ram Radio off the air,” said McCluskey.
Ram Radio is one of the thousands of Internet Radio Stations that find their home on Live365, an internet radio platform provider, it's also one of the largest and most successful station on Live365. Ram Radio was recently ranked the number one traditional country internet radio station as tracked by Arbitron.
Article comments
1 - marjoryt
I absolutely NEED internet radio! Around here there is ONLY canned pop, canned lounge, canned hiphop, and canned country, and canned rock. The country, hiphop, and rock stations play ONLY music by male singers. When you think about it - MTV, VHS, and BET do exactly the same. That's a shame, because there are great artist of both sexes (and some artists that change sexes, but that's another story). Celtic? Not around here, nor is there alternative, or historic, or world - this ruling will effectively close down my enjoyment of music. In addition, my office has terrible reception - internet radio was a very elegant reception method, and I AM a subscriber to Live 365.