Internet radio day of silence

This is one of the reasons that I have no problem speaking out as boldly as I do against the record companies and their puppet organization the RIAA. One of their recent tactics is to massively jack up the royalties that Internet radio stations must pay. Not only that, but they've made the changes retroactive! Imagine that you ran a legitimate Internet radio station. Imagine that you've gone to all the trouble of securing enough funding through advertising to be able to legally play the music, and you get rewarded for that by having your rates jacked up several hundred percent, FAR beyond what any normal radio broadcaster has to pay. If that's not enough you have to backpay those absurd rates for 18 months.

It's clear that their desire is to destroy Internet radio. They complain about pirates but when people go about legally licensing the music they decide they don't like that either.

It's what I've argued for a long time. This isn't about money, it's about control. Traditional broadcast radio stations pay a relatively small royalty fee. I have no hard evidence to back this up, but I know it's widely speculated that they in turn are financially supported by the record companies in exchange for playing what they're told to play. If you listen to popular radio it's not difficult to believe that.

I think it's clear that the record companies felt threatened by the net radio stations that played their own independent selections of music, or, in the case of Pandora, allowed the end user to design their own musical selection. Because that's not what the record companies want to do. They want to tell us what we're supposed to listen to and buy.

I direct all those interested to this link, it can tell the rest of the story far better than I could. The short story is that there is currently a bill working its way through both the us Senate and House of Representatives.

If the bills are defeated and they put the majority of legitimate Internet radio broadcasters out of business then I'll have VERY little sympathy when they complain about the remaining illegal broadcasters. How hypocritical can you get?

I love Internet radio. I'm able to hear music I'd never hear anywhere else. I rarely listen to what's become known as terrestrial radio (I'm unhappy with the current terms, I'd prefer dropping the use of radio when referring to internet audio broadcasting altogether). I have the big three music stations tuned in to my car radio and I sometimes flip through them but I rarely stay on any one of them, the music is just too uniformly awful. At best I've got a talk/news station that I often end up listening to. It's a little dry, but still a lot more palatable than what the record companies are trying to force feed me through the other options.