If you ever wondered why you either: never listen to radio (me), or don't often hear anything interesting and new on whatever corporate-owned radio station you listen to, here's why:
Can an Ohio Radio Station Reinvent Itself Yet Again? - WSJ.com
... If the new royalty rules stick, record labels will get higher fees from online radio stations, but some small labels worry about the long-term consequences. Sue Busch, head of radio promotions at Seattle's Sub Pop Records, says most radio executives she knows rarely play new, independent music, relying on business consultants to tell them which songs are likely to be most popular. The WOXY DJs, she says, play songs they enjoy themselves.
“There aren't too many radio people who will just chit-chat about music they like,” she says. “We're pretty big on taking care of people who have taken care of us.”
In a different galaxy, a galaxy where music wasn't controlled by Armani-wearing drones, I would have been a great DJ. I love making mix tapes (now CDs) for people; I made 59 compilations of 90 minute cassette tapes for playing at the Magnolia Cafe (before ASCAP/BMI shut Mag Cafe owner Kent Cole), and enjoyed my brief guest spots on a non-profit radio station in Austin playing Afro-Pop records. But the opportunities for having a free-form radio show are few, and soon-to-be-extinct if the Clear Channels have their way.
I've heard of WOXY, never listened to it though.
Tags: radio
For 26 years, a tiny Ohio radio station called WOXY dodged regulatory roadblocks by morphing from an old-school broadcaster into a Web-only radio station and then into an arm of an online CD store.Now WOXY's nine lives may be running out. Last week, after years of artificially low royalty costs to encourage Internet radio's growth, the federal Copyright Royalty Board raised the royalty rates that Web radio stations must pay to play music.
The upshot: The annual cost of running WOXY could more than double to around $2 million, far exceeding the station's $500,000 to $1 million in annual revenue. The board's decision could still be appealed or rescinded by Congress, but WOXY manager Bryan Jay Miller says, “I don't see the situation getting any better.”
He would know. Since Mr. Miller started working at WOXY as a college student 15 years ago, the station has struggled to overcome several regulatory obstacles that have hurt little radio stations. One change came in 1996, when the government increased the number of radio stations a big media company could own, leaving less room for independent radio stations. That pushed many smaller radio stations onto a new medium: the Internet. Today, more than 50 million people listen to Internet radio, including independent Web-only stations like WOXY, Accuradio and Soma FM, which stay afloat through advertising and listener donations.
But new regulations have now reached the online stations. The Copyright Royalty Board increased the fee they are required to pay to music performers to 0.08 cent a song per listener, retroactive to 2006, on top of the fees they already pay to songwriters and composers. And that fee will increase each year, rising to 0.19 cent by 2010.
What's more, small Webcasters like WOXY used to fall into a special category that paid royalties based on total revenue or expenses, not the number of songs they played. Now, they'll be held to the same rules as everyone else.
For San Francisco-based SomaFM, the change pushes its fees for last year from $22,000 to more than $600,000, far exceeding its 2006 revenue of $220,000. Chicago-based AccuRadio expects last year's royalties of $48,000 to jump to $600,000, above last year's revenue of $400,000. “This will kill my business the moment I have to make a month's payment under this new rate,” says Kurt Hanson, who runs AccuRadio.
Ripping off the public, the radios and even Google, Inc. thru You tube isn't fair practice. What's all this crap about royalties when we know it's not the artists or any worker related to the recording who is going to get rich?
This sucks big time.