Internet Radio is (almost) saved?
Remember how last year there was a big to do about the future of internet radio? The US Copyright Royalty Board imposed new, higher fees for online broadcasters, and web radio services like Pandora and Last.fm complained that the new fees would effectively put them out of business. A bill was introduced in Congress to work things out, but that never really went anywhere. But now, a year and a half later, the Digital Media Association, which represents a number of online music distributors, announced an agreement with copyright holders. It just doesn't exactly cover internet radio.Here's the deal. If you're a company that provides limited music downloads or interactive streaming audio, you have to pay 10.5% of your revenue in royalties, less any amount owed for performance royalties. That covers subscription based services like Rhapsody which let you download music to your PC, so long as the music becomes useless when you stop paying up. It also covers interactive sites like Last.fm which let you select the songs you want to play.
What it doesn't cover are internet radio sites like Pandora or Radio Paradise which provide a stream of music for you selected by a human being (not yourself) or a computer algorithm. No agreement has been reached yet to cover these services.
The good news is that if the parties involved were able to work out a reasonable deal for certain types of online music services, there's hope that Pandora and other online radio companies can be saved... eventually.
[via Techmeme]
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