They all need to be saved. http://www.savenetradio.org/ is a coalition trying to keep Internet radio from going into extinction. I first heard about all this because Pandora would be one of the many casualties. I blogged about Pandora back in June of last year. Basically, the Copyright Board ruled in favor of a strict hike in royalty rates for webcasters pay to record labels via SoundExchange for streaming Internet radio. By strict hike we're talking about a 300% increase! This ruling would go into effect on May 15 and is retroactive back to January of 2006. Nice. If this ruling goes through as planned, you can say goodbye to Internet radio. Smaller companies will go bankrupt and bigger companies will quit that part of their business because it will no longer make business sense to keep it going.
According to the article, terrestrial radio pays nothing to SoundExchange and satellite radio pays only 3-7% of their revenue to SoundExchange. The relevance there is that the record labels aren't making a killing there so there is little to gain for directing listeners back to FM. The thing I don't like about it the most is that FM radio SUUUUUUUUUCKS. Internet radio and satellite radio both offer a much much needed variety. Bands that deserve to be recognized and discovered have a good way to do so through Internet radio. We need more variety, not less. FM needs to learn a lesson or two about what people want. The record labels are just pissed because their profits are down. The Internet is here to stay. The old farts in the radio and record label business need to get a grip.
There is hope though. The Internet Radio Equality Act can save the Internet radio industry. I'm also pleased that this is a bipartisan effort so we need not get mixed up in the politics. http://www.savenetradio.org/ has a lot of very good information about all this. Congress can get behind this by simply voting in favor of the Internet Radio Equality Act. Over a million people have already written, faxed or called their representatives to get this passed. Let's hope this or something else is done to save Internet radio. It's good stuff and people need it whether they know it or not!
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