Tuesday June 26, 2007 is National Day of Silence for webcasters. They are protesting increases to royalties paid for music on Internet radio. The new rates come into effect on July 15 but are retroactive to January 1, 2006. The rate change is not trivial. It’s somewhere in the ballpark of a 300% increase!
From the press release at SaveNetRadio.org:
The regularly scheduled programming of millions of Internet radio listeners will be temporarily interrupted tomorrow when tens of thousands of U.S. webcasters observe a national Day of Silence. Protesting the recent 300 percent royalty rate increase for online music webcasters, the aim of the industry wide daylong blackout is to raise awareness of the threat these new rates pose to the future of Internet radio and rally support for legislation pending in Congress.
Simply stated, this will kill a substantial number of Internet radio stations. A couple of tidbits from the coverage at Read/Write Web:
Live365 predicts that the rate increase will shut up to 80% of its stations and reduce its 260 broadcasting genres to just 10. Last year, Live365 paid SoundExchange, the group that collects and distributes sound recording royalties, $1 million on behalf of its broadcasters, who pay an average of $60 to run their online radio stations. It is estimated that the retroactive rate increase will force Live365 to owe $4.2 million.
… 14,000 Internet radio stations will go dark tomorrow, including big players like Yahoo!, Live365, Pandora, Rhapsody, and MTV, as well as a number of terrestrial stations that also broadcast online
(via Read/Write Web)
I hope the Day of Silence has some impact. I hate it when the music industry gets so greedy that it hurts listeners, which seems to be what the industry is best at these days.