Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

royalties posts

Filed under: Audio, Business, News

Congress extends deadline for Internet radio royalty negotiations

Royalties have been a bone of contention between major record labels and Internet radio stations for years, and now it looks like the two sides only have 30 more days to iron out an agreement. After they failed to agree by the February 2009 deadline that Congress set last year, Congress took action to extend the deadline to 30 days from last Wednesday.

Until last year, the Copyright Royalty Board had the authority to determine the rates webcasters would have to pay for songs, but a 2008 bill called for negotiation on the issue instead. What's missing from all the coverage of this extension is what happens if an agreement can't be reached by the new deadline. According to the bill -- which was passed without amendment -- after the 30 day period passes, no agreement can be reached under the existing provisions, which means the rules of the game could change again at Congress' whim.

[via AppScout]

Filed under: Audio, Internet

High royalty fees could cause Pandora to close its music box

Pandora blues
Music discovery service and online radio station Pandora may have to shut down, thanks to high royalty fees imposed last year by the US Copyright Royalty Board. Pandora founder Tim Westergren says his company is currently paying 70% of its revenue to SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalties for artists.

While nobody is arguing that artists shouldn't be paid for their work, this Copyright Royalty Board decision has always seemed a bit shortsighted. First of all, artists don't make a penny for music broadcast on traditional radio, even though radio station owners bring in plenty of dollars through advertising. Second, since Pandora doesn't just stream audio, but determines a listener's musical tastes and streams music from artists they might like, the service is an amazing promotional tool for musicians who might otherwise not be heard. Why would an organization that says it's concerned with paying artists try to shoot that service in the foot?

Webcasters have to pay a fee every time they stream a song -- and that fee is rising from 8/100 of a cent per song last year to 19/100 of a cent per song by 2010. The new royalty rates are hitting Pandora especially hard because the company streams hundreds of thousands of songs to hundreds of thousands of listeners simultaneously. I assume similar services like Last.fm are also feeling the pinch, but Last.fm was recently purchased by media giant CBS, while Pandora is an independent company with shallower pockets.

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio