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Buy Mac Products Custom radio services like Pandora or last.fm won’t have to shutter – yet. Sound Exchange has agreed to not enforce the new rates right away, most likely trying to head off congressional intervention.
Read the wired magazine article here.
Posts Tagged: riaa
Net Radio Reprieve
Silent Radio Day
Today is Radio Silence Day, when thousands of online radio music stations go silent to protest the upcoming increase in music fees. This canard promoted by the RIAA basically insures that any internet radio station goes out of business. Not only will fees increase, but they are retroactive to the past 18 months!
Pandora says it best. Read their home page here:
http://pandora.com/
Mad yet? Call your congressman!
Save Pandora
Pandora – the awesome music recommendation internet radio site – is likely to shut down if the new rates for Internet Radio broadcasters are upheld. This is an RIAA backed initiative that will essentially kill Internet Radio, or at least force it overseas.
Read Pandora’s letter to learn more.
FAIR USE? Sort of.
Ars Technica has a nice analysis of the new pro-consumer FAIR USE bill being proposed in the USA. It’s a start, but there’s still a long way to go before true “fair use” recording rights are protected.
Basically, the bill gives hardware companies an exemption, but does nothing for software. To me, it seems like a way to get the content companies and the hardware companies on the same side, and then crush the software companies, where all the true innovation is taking place.
Go read the entire article.
PERFORMance Anxiety
Looks like the PERFORM act just won’t die. This is the nonsense legislation – sponsored by the RIAA – that would force satellite, digital, and Internet radio providers (but not over-the-air radio) to implement measures designed to restrict the ability of listeners to record audio from the services.
On the Internet side, given the plethora of radio stations all over the world, this would basically kill American Internet radio.
You can read more from Ars Technica.
Once you’re sufficiently outraged, contact your senators here.
Just how sensitive are they?
The RIAA shows an “abundance of sensitivity.”
I agree with the RIAA
Hell has not frozen over.
The RIAA is behind a compulsory licensing system for mobile phone ring tones, which would make it easier for everyone to adopt the technology. The alternative where royalties are negotiated song-by-song is being pushed by the Songwriters Guild among others.
Radio is another place where compulsory licensing is in effect, and this system was a great catalyst to the nascent radio technology.
Article here in Hollywood Reporter.
Now, if only the music labels would come up with a way to purchase unrestricted MP3s at a reasonable cost… then Hell would really have frozen over!