Things are pretty hosed when something as wonderful as Soma FM disappears in a flash because an obscure panel of judges who work for the library comes down off the mountain with a crazy whole-hog rewrite of the ground rules for an entire industry.
Don’t fool yourself — the only internet radio which will survive will be so thickly encrusted with ads that it makes Times Square look like a monastery, and any webcaster without the sales muscle to get top-dollar rates isn’t even going to have the option to sleaze up like that.
And forget really high-quality playlists generated just for you via machine learning algorithms fed a steady diet of raw information about your listening habits — the new rules set a $500 per station minimum. You would need to generate at least $500 a year for your webcaster just to break even on the up-front costs. From now on every unique set of tastes costs extra, just like with over the air broadcasting. You’ll get pre-programmed stations and be grateful.
So fucking save net radio, goddammit.
I know this comes off as overwrought, but I feel really sad about this.
Pointers to related stuff:
Radio and Internet Newsletter has a great Fisking related to the bill.
Wind In The Wire explains the situation.
Broadcast Law Blog goes over the procedural background, including this nugget:
The Board concluded that the rapidly escalating rate was justified as it brought the statutory services closer to the interactive services as the advertising market grows over the next few years.
So it looks like we are heading into the golden age of pirate radio.
The people of the internet always route around the damage.
Up until now, web radio was the domain of the few people who could be bothered with obeying the law.
webcasting is a really bad tool for underground activity. Pirate net radio would not be hidden in any way, and it would be limited to all the other arbitrary restrictions of DMCA streaming without any of the protections. For example: no skipping in the stream, yet no automatic license in exchange for blocking skipping.
Take a look at what Jeremie Miller says here: http://jeremie.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070309-125613
“Folks, we’re ON THE INTERNET here. What happens when a network goes down? You route around it. If the big music licensing conglomerates can’t understand the market, route around them. This could be the best thing to ever happen to Internet Radio, and music in general, a new marketplace and new systems will form in the wake of the dying beast(s). A fallen tree may support more life than a living one.”