The Future of all Internet Radio

http://www.lineageradio.com front page story:

Since May of 2005, Thinking Man Studios Broadcasting has been in existence, bringing gamers quality entertainment through the form of internet radio. It is time now that TMSBroadcasting evolves to the next level.

The current state of Internet Radio as a whole for United States based companies is unknown. With this said, TMSBroadcasting has decided to close its doors to internet radio, effective Sunday, April 8th, and open them to a completely new venue, IPTV. In the summer of 2007 TMSBroadcasting will be launching its IPTV network, which will have completely new custom programming centered around all forms of gaming, web culture, pc / mac technology, and more.

We have enjoyed entertaining you over these last two years and hope that you will stay with us as we migrate into the realm of IPTV.

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And with this said its my turn to step up and ask you guys if you care to help me. I started in Lineage Radio in October, with no experience, and since then I've fallen in love with broadcasting and decided I've wanted to go to school for it. It has been a great experience personally and educationally and its really sad to see it go. But it's not only sad for me there have been alot of people grace Lineage Radio as DJ's and have all had their own kind of experience. And not just Lineage Radio! there are literally 100's and thousands of other internet radio stations out there! Think of them all. I don't want to sound sappy or anything but let not strip them of their privledges to run their own internet radio or have a voice. With that said read on for details of what has happened and I really hope you can help out also!

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Recently, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) issued the significantly higher new royalty rates for Internet radio for the 2006-2010 period. The ruling ignored webcasting community proposals and set out the SoundExchange proposed "per performance" rates (below) and a $500 minimum fee per channel per year.

New per performance royalty rates established by the CRB

Year Royalty
Rate Increase Year Over Year Increase Over 1999-2005
1999-2005 $0.000762
2006 $0.0008 5% 5%
2007 $0.0011 38% 44%
2008 $0.0014 27% 84%
2009 $0.0018 29% 136%
2010 $0.0019 6% 149%

What You Can Do
Speak up!

Meanwhile, make your voice heard by the lawmakers on Capitol Hill! Call, write, e-mail, and/or visit your Representatives and Senators today and request that:

Congress void the retroactive $500 per channel minimum that threatens to drive small webcasters out of business.


Congress reinstate the Small Webcaster Settlement Act. The CRB declared that the 2002 SWSA would not be extended despite the Small Webcaster contracts SoundExchange offered on its website and signed with Small Webcasters for 2006 and 2007.


Stop the retroactive, ex post facto royalty payments for 2006 mandated by the CRB, until all appeals have been heard.


Create a level playing field by bringing the Internet radio per performance rates into parity with traditional and satellite radio. Unlike internet radio, traditional radio does NOT pay royalties to record labels or artists for songs performed over the air.

How to Contact Your Representatives and Senators

Send a stamped letter, mailed by U.S. Mail or FedEx to your congressperson (http://www.congress.org/congressorg/...ry/congdir.tt). This type of hand-written message with your own personal story is treated with a LOT of value when received by your congressperson. Include your personal story... your name and location, the type of music you listen to, and how this new royalty will affect you. Be as specific as you possibly can.

Though it's not nearly as effective as a postmarked letter, you can also send an e-mail message to your Senators and Representatives. With your zipcode or address, you can use this quick, easy e-mail form to get directly to the congressperson for your location: http://www.congress.org (use the form letter found there or write your own story)

Related Links:

Full written decision of the Copyright Royalty Board:
http://www.loc.gov/crb/proceedings/2...erms2005-1.pdf

Radio and Internet Newsletter: http://www.kurthanson.com/

Tell your friends whats happening and have them help out too! Look at the graph up top, by 2010 internet radio will be obsolete.
Source: http://www.live365.com/choice/

You have my support, Jess.

I sent my letters off as soon as I heard about it. Unfortunately, one of my senators is behind this travesty.

Still, I do what I can...

Lineage Radio's Resident Sinner

I don't think you made clear for most people what the costs are.

For example. The cost for the internet radio station works like this. .0011 per song per listener. So if a station has 5000 listeners then the cost would be 5.5 cents per song.

If the station plays 10 songs per hour that 55cents. For a whole day that is $13.20 or $4818 for the year. The costs are also going to go up every year. This is alot of money for small time internet raidio people. Imagine if you are a major radio station that streams on the internet. The cost will be huge.

Basicly this law means the end of internet radio.

Don't forget.... If i'm not mistaken. This radio royalty is also retroactive.

It also bears mentioning that standard radio stations (AM/FM) do not pay royalties.

This isn't about "making it equal" between traditional radio stations and internet radio stations. This is simply about money, and control of a market that has, up to now, been largely untapped by the major media conglomerates (Clear Channel, Hurst, etc.).

Not only that, if you're a fan of small-label, independant label or simply underground music, the death of small-scale internet radio seriously impacts your access to these types of music.

It is worth noting that terrestrial stations that do broadcast on the web also pay, but if they do no internet streaming, they are not affected. One of our local stations streams to people in the county that don't have access to the station.

There is a way around paying the royalties ... and it is so simple it will make everyone cry if they just think about it and understand network trafic ...
Like AM/FM radio you have to make it so people do not log onto a tcp/ip connection ... instead you stream it UDP then it is an open Broadcast and untill the FAA makes taxes on OPEN broadcasts you can fight the ruling in Federal court and win .
there is no way to see who captures your feed when using UDP unless you want them to pay you so you make it 100% effective using tcp/ip .
using udp isnt the greatest for sure . but how many of you have lost signal for a second when driving or such . its the same idea . no error correction just catch a packet deal.

are shoutcast also affected by this new ruling?

Current model of merchandizing stuffs from recording industry is obsolete and dieing. So called "movie and music associations and organisations that protect authors" do not seem to jump on fast train of new progressive methods of selling, bradcasting ... so they try to loby, push, and do whatever they can by whatever means to squeeze last penny out of everyone and everything.

Soon you'll be paying just because you were born with eyes and ears.
(Did you know they tried to establish law where scouts, kids, and such have to pay for songs sang by campfire in wilderness, if they are subject of copyright protection?)

In Germany, you have to pay for public broadcasting if you have a PC that connects to the internet and aren't already paying for a radio or television set. Just because they offer them publicly.

In most EU countries you pay some fee when you buy clena CD, DVD, memory card, harddisk, CD/DVD recorder, computer ... just in case you'd use those things to store or record some copy protected materials. If you burn your images from vacation on CD? Well ...
Yet you can be punished when they really find those materials on your PC. Talk about being blamed twice for the same thing and even pre-pay it.

There is a way around paying the royalties ... and it is so simple it will make everyone cry if they just think about it and understand network trafic ...
Like AM/FM radio you have to make it so people do not log onto a tcp/ip connection ... instead you stream it UDP then it is an open Broadcast and untill the FAA makes taxes on OPEN broadcasts you can fight the ruling in Federal court and win .
there is no way to see who captures your feed when using UDP unless you want them to pay you so you make it 100% effective using tcp/ip .
using udp isnt the greatest for sure . but how many of you have lost signal for a second when driving or such . its the same idea . no error correction just catch a packet deal.

I believe you have misunderstood how UDP's connectionless transport works.

http://www.rfc-zone.org/rfc768.html

I found this link to voice your comments and to add your name to the list to save internet radio.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/saveinternetradio/index.html

awesome thank you guys for your support and pass these links around!

I was concerned when they shut Scour down.
I was concerned when they shut napster down.
I was concerned when the RIAA where perusing token victims to scare everyone.
I was concerned when they sued KaZzA and bought it out.
I was concerned when they shut down eDonkey (though it's still alive and well via eMule).
I was concerned when they raided the host of Pirate's Bay and shut it down (though it was brought back up).
I was concerned when RIAA started buying out Bit Torrent clients.
And the list goes on.

Am I concerned about this? No. It sucks... but it's indicative of a greater problem. You're worried about internet radio dieing out buy 2k10? Well... I'm worried about the freedom of internet in general. Everybody wants a piece.... but the government/ big business is winning. We came so close to having individual ISPs control the flow to what and where at their discretion... so who knows what else they have in the works. Not to mention all the stigma we have over file sharing and p2p networks. So yeah... this issue with the internet radio isn't bothering me in the slightest.

Greetings,

awesome thank you guys for your support and pass these links around!

Hmmmmm, I figure their first mistake was to fire me.

They didn't even make it 4 months past that. I made it 3 years !!!

I did learn a lot from the experience, I look at listening to the radio in a whole new way now.

I hope all the best for you sweetie, give me a wink if you need anything. I'll leave you with this : You can get away with so much if you don't try to sell anything.

THEN, when you get enough traffic, you'll attract people with the money to pay for the royalties in exchange for their publicity.

It's a question of going from amateur to pro. BIG difference.

EDIT : Oh I forgot. If you dissolve, I am now OFFICIALLY no longer bound to you. ROFL, you didn't even own me in the first place.

Have Fun ! ™

Darkmotion
Board Devil (http://yodup.club.fr/critiques_bouquins/historique/sagafolco.htm) / Fired !(burnt down) (http://forums.mmoradio.com/forumdisplay.php?f=66)

As a former volunteer for TMSB I for one would like to say that I very much enjoyed working with everyone, thank you to all of the listeners, you all made such a great influence and a deep impact on how Lineage Radio was.

are shoutcast also affected by this new ruling? ??

Yep.