Internet Radio

The planned increase in royalties for Web radio broadcasts has been a surprisingly under-reported story, especially considering how ubiquitous Web radio stations from Pandora and Last.fm to the Web stream of a local radio station have become in the American office. Mentions of the change have been folded into other stories, but there have been few major articles on it outside of the Wall Street Journal and the blog Idolator, which has been linking to the WSJ stories and writing its own posts — just one part of its strong coverage of how the music industry affects indie fans.

In short, the royalty fee for playing a song over the Internet is about to skyrocket, and the change will bankrupt most Web broadcasters. The repercussions of this are obvious and the motivations for it confounding. Another avenue for new music being squashed.

A bill to counteract the fees has been introduced in the Senate. For more info, go to...

SaveNetRadio.org