It's not often that I pick up the flag of a cause and run with it, but sometimes situations arise in which every voice counts and must demand to be heard. This month, that cause is internet radio in the USA, and our opinions DO matter. Please help to save internet radio by signing the petition linked below.
About the SaveNetRadio coalition:
The SaveNetRadio coalition is made up of artists, labels, listeners, and webcasters. Please contact us if you are interested in sponsoring an event, making a donation, or would like to become a leader in the fight to save Internet radio. The recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board to increase webcasters' royalty rates between 300 and 1200 percent over the next 5 years jeopardizes the industry and threatens to homogenize Internet radio.
Artists, listeners, and Webcasters, have joined our coalition to help save Internet radio. The coalition believes strongly in compensating artists, but Internet radio as we know it will not survive under the new royalties. We need your help. Please take a moment to sign our petition to let your member of Congress know how much Internet radio means to you. Together, we can force Congress to create a structural solution for this problem and create an environment where Internet radio, and the millions of artists it features, can continue to grow for generations to come.
About the Issue
On March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio's royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby jeopardized the industry’s future.
At the request of the Recording Industry Association of America, the CRB ignored the fact that Internet radio royalties were already double what satellite radio pays, and multiplied the royalties even further. The 2005 royalty rate was 7/100 of a penny per song streamed; the 2010 rate will be 19/100 of a penny per song streamed. And for small webcasters that were able to calculate royalties as a percentage of revenue in 2005 – that option was quashed by the CRB, so small webcasters’ royalties will grow exponentially!
Before this ruling was handed down, the vast majority of webcasters were barely making ends meet as Internet radio advertising revenue is just beginning to develop. Without a doubt most Internet radio services will go bankrupt and cease webcasting if this royalty rate is not reversed by the Congress, and webcasters’ demise will mean a great loss of creative and diverse radio. Surviving webcasters will need sweetheart licenses that major record labels will be only too happy to offer, so long as the webcaster permits the major label to control the programming and playlist. Is that the Internet radio you care to hear?
As you know, the wonderful diversity of Internet radio is enjoyed by tens of millions of Americans and provides promotional and royalty opportunities to independent labels and artists that are not available to them on broadcast radio. What you may not know is that in just the last year Internet radio listening jumped dramatically, from 45 million listeners per month to 72 million listeners each month. Internet radio is already popular and it is already benefiting thousands of artists who are finding new fans online every day.
Action must be taken to stop this faulty ruling from destroying the future of Internet radio that so many millions of listeners depend on each day. Instead of relying on lawyers filing appeals in the CRB and the courts, the SaveNetRadio Coalition has been formed to represent every webcaster, every Net Radio listener, and every artist who enjoys and benefits from this medium. Please join our fight for the preservation of Internet radio.
http://www3.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Friday, February 09, 2007
More Quotations
Today, just a few more quotations from the pens of wise men:
He who dares not offend cannot be honest. --Thomas Paine
(Is it just me, or are most people far too terrified of offending others to pronounce an honest opinion or judgment?)
History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. --Thurgood Marshall (Oh, that we should not be learning that lesson yet again!)
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (Who knew that poets were also psychologists?!)
He who dares not offend cannot be honest. --Thomas Paine
(Is it just me, or are most people far too terrified of offending others to pronounce an honest opinion or judgment?)
History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. --Thurgood Marshall (Oh, that we should not be learning that lesson yet again!)
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (Who knew that poets were also psychologists?!)
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Miscommunication
You know how sometimes when you're talking with someone, what you say and what the other person hears are two completely different things? You always figure that the other person is wrong, that she just wasn't listening closely enough or she didn't care enough about what you were saying to really pay attention. Then one day, you have an argument so huge that you are left stunned and bewildered, wondering how you could possibly be so colosally misunderstood by someone who is not being intentionally dense. A moment comes when you realize that you're both talking past each other instead of to each other. But neither of you can figure out why the misunderstanding continues to grow, so you each continue to try to explain your positions, hoping that somehow, the key will be found and the answer revealed. It never occurs to either of you that you're not comprehending the other's points because you're speaking completely different languages. Neither of you has the faintest idea that your perspectives are so mutually foreign that you might as well be from different countries.
How ironic that we sometimes have the most trouble communicating with people who speak the same language as we do. When dealing with foreigners, we approach all communication with the knowledge that we will have to work at being understood, and that cultural differences might lead to non-verbal cues being misinterpreted. But when we deal with our compatriots, and perhaps most especially with those of our own generation, we completely forget that we are separated by differences no less substantial than those we possess with others. We forget that differences of upbringing, geography, family, race, religion, education, health, prosperity, and personal philosophy all unite to form vastly disparate perspectives. And even though we know full well that people disagree about a multitude of things all the time, we continue to blunder blindly forward under the fundamental belief that at least we're all looking at the same picture, even if we're interpreting it differently. How is it that it never even occurs to me that the brilliantly-colored oil painting I gaze at with rapture is nothing but a crude charcoal sketch to my companion? And how is it that she can see nothing but charcoal?
How ironic that we sometimes have the most trouble communicating with people who speak the same language as we do. When dealing with foreigners, we approach all communication with the knowledge that we will have to work at being understood, and that cultural differences might lead to non-verbal cues being misinterpreted. But when we deal with our compatriots, and perhaps most especially with those of our own generation, we completely forget that we are separated by differences no less substantial than those we possess with others. We forget that differences of upbringing, geography, family, race, religion, education, health, prosperity, and personal philosophy all unite to form vastly disparate perspectives. And even though we know full well that people disagree about a multitude of things all the time, we continue to blunder blindly forward under the fundamental belief that at least we're all looking at the same picture, even if we're interpreting it differently. How is it that it never even occurs to me that the brilliantly-colored oil painting I gaze at with rapture is nothing but a crude charcoal sketch to my companion? And how is it that she can see nothing but charcoal?
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