As we reported previously, today is the day that hundreds, if not thousands, of online radio stations are going silent, broadcasting static, or PSAs and other messages to their listeners to bring attention to the impending royalty rate hike from the Copyright Royalty Board.

Across the net you can see signs of the protest in action. Yahoo! Music's radio station guide is featuring links to SaveNetRadio.org at the top of its list. SomaFM, a popular indie radio station broadcasting from San Francisco is playing intermittent PSAs against the background of the BART. Rhapsody has a large banner across their front page showing a woman with duct tape across her mouth, with a zipper drawn on it. ShoutCast has information posted where its normally lengthy radio station guide sits, issuing a call to action.

If you care about online radio, and want the luxury to be able to turn it on a year, two years or even five years from now, then act today and contact your Senators and State Representatives. Don't sit idly by and let net radio become a victim of senseless royalty rates, while terrestrial FM & AM stations continue to play the same boring material over and over, without having to pay the same exorbitant royalties. Post links to other net radio stations participating in today's protest in the comments.

Update: KCRW Santa Cruz is joining the protest today by interrupting all programming to discuss the upcoming royalty rate hike with Mike Riksen of NPR, Kurt Hanson of AccuRadio, Tim Westergren of Pandora, Caryn Mathes of American University Radio, Ian Rogers of Yahoo! Music, Ted Leibowitz of BAGeL Radio and Johnny Floater of Live365.com. Check their site for more info. (Thanks Brad!)

Related:
Download Squad Interview: Tim Westergren of Pandora
Net Radio gets two more months to live

It's a piece of cake to record streaming audio from the web and save it to your hard drive, but I had no idea that it could be this easy to rip Internet radio into individual tracks with full tags. That's what Windows app StationRipper does, which causes me some surprise that, after two years in existence, it still hasn't been somehow bludgeoned to death by the RIAA. Anyhow, it has a laundry list of great features: The basic (free) version of StationRipper lets you rip two streams at once and intregrates with iTunes. The versions you pay for add a bunch of features you may or may not want, like ripping up to 600 streams at once (bandwidth and processor notwithstanding) and filtering tracks by length. Cool tool.

[Via Waxy.org]