Soda - Keeping Curious

In the digital world there seems to be a continuous battle between the old way of doing business and the new. Quite often deals are brokered to ease these transitions, but occasionally, people like to take advantage of negotiation preceding and try to get much more than their fair share. You may or may not be aware of an ongoing battle running alongside the usual lawsuit press surrounding the music industry. Internet radio is becoming a large market, it is offering many different specialised stations catering for every different persons tastes and preferences. So much so is this diversity, that in America alone 7 million people listen to online radio every day. All that is set to change by a very real threat.

I’ve been involved with Internet Radio for many years now, ever since some friends of mine created SHOUTcast some ten years ago. Back then I had the advantage of being sat on very fast Internet access in my dorm at university, at a time when the original Napster didn’t really exist and there wasn’t the saturation of networks that there is today with the likes of YouTube and Bittorrent.

Streaming my music back then was a luxury I didn’t have to pay for. But it did require fast internet access, and that did cost someone money. Today, many hobbyists are doing the same, but not many have the luxury of subsidised bandwidth. You wouldn’t know it, but the big guys such as AOL do offer lots of bandwidth for free to many stations to aid the growth of this industry, purely because the networking costs are just far too high for popular stations otherwise. Simply put, the majority of Internet stations out there run AT A LOSS. That isn’t to say that the record companies do not make money from them.

Currently, Internet radio stations pay more expensive fees than terrestrial or satellite radio. It is these fees that, under examination, are going to see a hike. Already lumbered with the overhead of running at an acceptable loss to fund their hobby, many station owners will see their losses increase substantially. To further drive the stake, these charges are going to be backdated, effectively fining Internet Radio as a whole.

Today marks yet another date on the calendar for people to try and get heard about this issue prior to the new rates and backdated payments coming into effect. To do that, the big players and small alike are turning their normal programming off for the day, either going offline or broadcasting an informational message about the issue, urging Americans to call on their congressional representative to force a change.

You can read more about the ongoing issues at SaveNetRadio.org. An old acquaintance of mine who rightfully has made his way up the ranks to be recently appointed General Manager of Yahoo’s Music division has posted a much better explanation of the issue on the Yahoo! Music Blog. You should read it, he’s in the unique position of having worked both sides of the fence.