As many of you know, Internet Radio has been under fire due to increases in copyright royalty increases. Through all of this we have remained on the air despite knowing that any day we may go silent.
A search on the topic will provide hours of reading. The recording industry realizes the financial potential of internet radio and wants their share of the pie. The big issue is “what is their fair share?” In the case of my station, their fair share would be zero. We generate no income from the operation of the station nor do we have any advertising on the related web pages. They fail to realize that it is “Hobby” radio. We pay a provider for the bandwidth to stream. We buy the music we play. Not to mention the cost of the equipment to make it all happen. Maybe I should be sending a bill to the recording industry for promoting their music!
Many Internet Radio Stations do have revenue coming in and do generate profits. They should and are willing to pay a reasonable royalty to the recording industry. The amount they have to pay remains to be seen. When and if it happens, we can only hope that “hobby” broadcasters such as me will either be exempt from such royalties or be charged a rate reasonable enough to allow it to be a hobby.
A number of “Hobby” stations have opted to stream on offshore servers to avoid this issue. The legal issues to this are still in question. If we have to do this, so be it. However I would prefer spending my “hobby” money on an American company.