Internet Radio could be going Because of new Royalty Rates

"Kurt Hanson's Radio Internet Newsletter has an analysis of the new royalty rates for Internet Radio announced by the US Copyright Office. The decision is likely to put most internet radio stations out of business by making the cost of broadcasting much higher than revenues. From the article: 'The Copyright Royalty Board is rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)...The maths suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.'"

There is a detailed article on it here: http://www.dailytech.com/SoundExchang...s/article6361.htm

It simply drives me nuts to no end, I'm sure their ultimate goal is to drive people back to buying discs and stopping the deline in their sales, and make a fortune in the process. One of these days they're going to bite off more than they can force down people's throats, I'm sure.

Gotta love the " 500" fee per channel, and also that the RIAA expects everyone to pay backowed royalty fees for all of 2006 along with 2007. And that the rates will more than double by 2010.