Court Denies Stay Of Webcast Royalty Hike

from the how-much-does-silence-cost? dept

Thu, Jul 12th 2007 9:06pm — Carlo Longino

An appeals court in Washington has denied the appeal of a group of webcasters, and the new, drastically increased rates will take effect on July 15. The head of SoundExchange, which could stand to rake in billions in "administrative fees", says the decision is "a major victory for recording artists and record labels". It's hard to see how that's the case, since should the new rates stand, the overwhelming effect will be a decrease in the amount of exposure artists get, and the number of times their music is heard -- not the dramatic increase in revenues he seems to be hinting at. Should these rates stand, and the RIAA succeeds in hitting broadcast radio stations with royalties (which we presume the SoundExchange boss would call another "major victory"), major-label music could suffer from a huge loss of exposure, which would translate into a huge drop in sales that would surely outweigh any revenue gains from the new royalties. Sounds like yet another way the record labels have figured out to destroy themselves. Update: As noted in the comments, SoundExchange says it won't enforce the new royalties yet, and will continue to negotiate them with webcasters.

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Filed Under: royalties, webcast
Companies: riaa

12 Comments

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Lutomes, 12 Jul 2007 @ 9:16pm

Of course...
Once the new royalty rates are put in place. The RIAA etc will be able to claim that the drop in music sales is a result of "Pirate Internet Radio" from all the unlicensed internet radio stations that offer free streaming of various playlists. (regardless of whether the music played is signed to the RIAA or just independent work)
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DrScum, 12 Jul 2007 @ 9:41pm

are you on crack? the "group of webcasters" won.

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/07/breaking-news-o.html
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trollificus, 12 Jul 2007 @ 9:57pm

Dude, hardly on crack, and hardly a
As of 5:08PM, it was a done deal, see:

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/07/soundexchange-t.html

If you have updates on the story, post them as such, and you did, and thanks.

But I stand by my 'sandpaper dildo' comment...as opposed to trusting the RIAA and calling this a 'win'.
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trollificus, 12 Jul 2007 @ 10:02pm

Ummm...the NON-POSTED 'sandpaper dildo' comment...
...was along the lines that you were a tool for referring to a situation in which the webcasters lost in the court of appeals and were saved from extinction by nothing but the tender mercies of SoundExchange as a "win".

It is clearly not, and I said they were only waiting for the RIAA to determine what size and abasiveness of dildo was suitable to rape them (the webcasters) with.

Not sure if it was the word 'rape' or the number all-caps words I had in that post that triggered some kind of review...
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trollificus, 12 Jul 2007 @ 10:03pm

Clearly, it was the all-caps...
...sorry.
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DrScum, 12 Jul 2007 @ 10:16pm

my bad, sorry, I just looked it up and posted.
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Yeow, 13 Jul 2007 @ 12:14am

All the stations need to just combine their songs into 1 very big mp3 file
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Rob, 13 Jul 2007 @ 3:31am

this article is inaccurate.
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Sanguine Dream, 13 Jul 2007 @ 5:55am

I'm confused...
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trollificus, 13 Jul 2007 @ 10:35am

*sigh*
There were a flurry of reports yesterday about the adverse (to the webcasters) decision regarding the CRB's outrageous fees in the court of appeals. I saw similar stories on /. and the Reg, too.

DrScum apparently first saw the NEW news-that SoundExchange had agreed to NOT impose the new fees and would enter negotiations to find something more realistic, and thought the story poster was being an idiot.

I stupidly flamed him (which flame, fortunately, was blocked for an excess of ALL CAPS) before I figured out the sequence of events. Sorry.

Read the link Dr posted. It explains the current state of the situation, which, I will submit, is still pretty perilous for the webcasters. Call your Congresscritter today!! I did.
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King Kamehameha, 16 Jul 2007 @ 6:29pm

correlation
Quite interesting that the points about decreased exposure will inevitably lead to less revenue because of a drop in sales; so closely correlates with trying to increase govt. coffers by increasing taxes on an activity.

Because of course if you make it harder for people to do said activity, there would never be a drop in said activity.

good synopsis.
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Jeff, 20 Jul 2007 @ 2:19pm

The large webcasters such as clearchannel and yahoo and google have been getting off cheap. They have the infrastructure and the audience that the advertisers want and will pay for. They make money from them and have an overhead not commencerate with the revenue generated by every recording artist and every label/publishers they use to generate audience.

This is a good deal for the artist. The ones that should be paid if any money is made from the use of their product.

If a new artist or a flegling webcaster is not in the position to be paid yet.....keep trying. The rich should not get richer off my sweat.
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