Internet Day of Silence Observation (Jun 27, 2007)

Hundreds of other streams – including bigtime players like Yahoo!, Live365, Rhapsody and MTV Online – have shut down as part of the protest against higher rates imposed for online music play by the Copyright Royalty Board.

Internet radio outlets are facing 17 months of back payments at the new, higher rate take effect on July 15 unless the CRB decision is overturned before then. And while rates vary, the increase can be as much as 300% more than what stations were paying previously.

Live365.Com CEO N. Mark Lam says one station airing 15 songs an hour to 500 listeners would pay $72,270 a year, which would mean "there is no industry." Stations webcasting through Live365 now pay an average of less than $1,000 a year, he says.

Soundexchange, the music industry group that pushed CRB for the new rates, says it ensures labels and artists will be fairly compensated for Internet play.

"But if webcasters can't stay in business," says Joel Salkowitz, who recently launched the popular website Originalhot97.Com and will join today's protest, "then no one gets anything." Salkowitz is urging his listeners to visit www.savenetradio.org for info on making their opinion known to their Washington representatives.

This day of protest led many people to finally take some action.

Most webcasters participating in the "Day of Silence" are urging their listeners to contact lawmakers to support the Internet Radio Equality Act, which would set aside the CRB rate hike and set a transitional royalty rate of 7.5% of revenues for 2006-2010. Versions of the bill are pending in both the House and the Senate.

Kurt Hanson: Thousands of Internet radio outlets are silent today in an industry-wide protest against a royalty rate that will almost certainly bankrupt the industry. Fans tuning in to major webcasters like Yahoo!Launchcast, Pandora, and Live365, as well as the millions of Americans that listen to thousands of other webcasters every day, are learning about the crisis, and many are taking action with calls and e-mails to Congress. Mainstream press outlets like the BBC and the Washington Post, as well as industry trade journals, are covering the event today. Many webcasters have blocked access to their streams, while others are broadcasting loops of ambient sound interspersed with PSAs urging their audiences to take action today by contacting their representatives in Washington D.C. In today's edition of RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter, we're featuring screenshots of several webcasters' homepages, offering a glimpse of "silence" across the industry.

Update in the PM: Floods of listeners trying to simultaneously access the contact info for their D.C. representatives have overwhelmed a number of the SaveNetRadio.org servers as a result of today's "Day of Silence" event. Switchboards in Congressional offices all over Capitol Hill are similarly tied up as they attempt to handle today's deluge of phone calls on the issue. According to a representative from SaveNetRadio, "This is by far the biggest one-day load [CapWiz] has ever been hit with, and they are adding servers and moving all available resources ASAP." The website is in the process of revising its home page to ask listeners to try again later this afternoon or tomorrow. Read more about this morning's outages and how webcasters should instruct listeners trying to access these sites, in this afternoon's edition of RAIN at http://www.kurthanson.com.

Red Herring: It was a “day of silence,” but Internet radio broadcasters made quite a statement on Tuesday. Some 14,000 webcasters—roughly half of all U.S. Internet radio broadcasters—turned off the tunes as part of a boycott to protest the steep royalty rates they could be forced to pay record labels

PR Newswire: Many Internet radio stations are deliberately offline today. Many Web-based music services and some conventional radio stations that offer Internet audio streams are scheduled to shut off their online music and programming until midnight tonight. Organizers are calling it Day of Silence and are hoping it will focus attention on a royalty-fee increase that many Internet-based broadcasters say could drive them out of business

Happy Hare: Sorely vexed at Talk Radio’s massive campaign against the Immigration Bill, Senator Trent Lott blurted out. “Talk Radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.” Now, there he goes again. Who does he think he is? Rosie O’Donnell? Hey! Lott is lucky to be still in the Senate fold after committing a major gaffe when celebrating Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday. During the old senator’s birthday party, Trent Lott rose to proclaim his regret that Thurmond had not been elected president. Thurmond was an unreconstructed southern bigot. It was probably a friend’s way of making his old buddy feel better, but, few took it that way. The aftershock of Lott’s earth shaking proclamation rippled into the main stream media

Edison Research: ’Net Passes Radio As ‘Most Essential’ Medium. Consumer media perceptions and habits are changing as the Internet becomes an increasingly important medium for information and entertainment, according to the “Internet and Multimedia 2007” report released Tuesday (June 27) by Edison Media Research. Consumers age 12 and older were asked to choose the “most essential” medium in their life; 33% chose the Internet, just behind television (36%), but well above radio (17%) and newspapers (10%). These results represent the major inroads the ’ Net has made in everyday American life since 2002, when the Internet trailed TV on this perception by a significant margin (20% vs. 39%), and also trailed radio’s 26%. Read the full report at edisonresearch.com.