The day the music died?

Policy is usually a dry subject causeing eyes to glaze over and heads to nod. The effect of policy is another thing. Last year an issue called Net Neutrality seemed to arise from nowhere, much to the surprise of the cable and telephone companies who had been pushing for major reform which never happened. This year a similar event may be underway with internet radio royalty payments.

Internet radio stations or web-radio, have paid royalties to Sound Exchange based on something called average tuning hours. Now though the royalty payment basis has changed to listener hours. This change will drive the total royalty payments to as much as triple the previous charge according to some internet radio operators.

There is an exception for non-commercial web radio stations who have low volume of plays.

An appeal to the original decision to change the rate calculation was, for the most part, denied. The fight has moved now to the Legislative front with a recent Senate bill introduced by Senators Brownback, and Wyden. Titled, Internet Radio Equality Act, the bill number is S. 1353. More information on this bill can be found at
< www.savenetradio.org/071510-wyden.pdf>.