NET RADIO PROTESTS RATES Webcasters see a groundswell of support from net radio supporters on “Day of Silence.” Alexandra Berzon – Red Herring It was a “day of silence,” but Internet radio broadcasters made quite a statement on Tuesday.
Some 14,000 webcasters—roughly half of all U.S. Internet radio broadcasters—turned off the tunes as part of a boycott to protest the steep royalty rates they could be forced to pay record labels. The new rates would go into effect July 15 unless Congress steps in or the broadcasters win a stay from a U.S. federal court.
The broadcasters hoped their boycott would whip an estimated 25 million daily U.S. Internet radio listeners into a frenzy. Web stations also hoped their protest would spur listeners to appeal to Congress to pass the Internet Radio Equality Act which would overturn a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board that would boost royalty rates by as much as 1200 percent in some cases.
Internet radio stations argue this rate hike would make streaming radio an impossible business to be in.
The royalty collecting group Sound Exchange, which represents record labels, has said the higher rates are justified because Internet radio has become a more mature business.
Organizers said Tuesday’s dramatic protest—which included a photo of a man wearing headphones with tape over his mouth on live365.com—resulted in an estimated 40,000 calls to Congress in support of the Internet radio bill, scheduled for hearings later this week.
The webcaster-supported bill bases royalty fees on a percentage of revenues, rather than a set per-song, per-listener model.
Boycott organizer SaveNetRadio Coalition said Congress had already received 400,000 emails and 75,000 phone calls from impassioned Internet radio listeners over the past eight weeks. Musicians have also gotten involved by hammering on the doors of Congress, and holding a concert and rally on a lawn outside the U.S. Capitol building.
The campaign has received more media attention than a similar protest in 2002, when activists succeeded in temporarily preventing the music industry from raising Internet radio royalty rates.
Web broadcasters taking part in Tuesday’s boycott included Yahoo’s Launchcast, Pandora, Live365, Real Networks’ Rhapsody, and MTV.com. But AOL and CBS’s Last.fm sat the day out, explaining that they didn’t want to interrupt their users’ experience.
“We don’t know for sure the total scale, but it was absolutely a success,” said SaveNetRadio spokesperson Jake Ward. “The company that tracks our web hits said they had not experienced a run on a web site since election night, or when Oprah recommended a web page to her audience seven months ago.” |