Internet Radio to shut down June 26th

Thousands of U.S. based webcasters including The Wave and sister station WCH Radio, plan to turn off the music and go silent this Tuesday, June 26th, to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that, if implemented, would lead to the virtual shutdown of this country's Internet radio industry.

Internet-Only webcasters and broadcasters that simulcast online will alert their listeners that "silence" is what Internet radio may be reduced to after July 15th, the day on with 17 months' worth of retroactive royalty payments - at new, exceedingly high rates - are due to the SoundExchange colleection organization, following a recent Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decision.

"In this case, 'silence' is an extremely appropriate metaphor, since silence may be what listeners hear from most webcasters starting on July 16th", says Kurt Hanson, publisher of RAIN: Radio and Internet Newsletter (www.kurthanson.com), one of the event's organizers. Hanson is also the founder of AccuRadio.

Major webcasters like Yahoo! Launch, Rhapsody, and Pandora.com will silence their streams along with other Day of Silence participants like WCH Radio and The Wave, Live365, TV Online, Radio Paradise and others.

"The arbitrary and drastic rate increases set by the Copyright Royalty Board on March 2nd threaten the very livelihood of thousands of webcasters and their millions of listeners throughtout the country," said Jake Ward, a spokesperson for the SaveNetRadio Coalition. "The campaign to save Internet radio - a genuine grassroots movement comprised of hundreds of thousands of webcasters, artists and independent labels, and Net radio listeners -has quickly brought this issue to the national forefront and the halls of Congress, but there is still more to be done before the approaching deadline of July 15th. On Tuesday, thousands of webcasters will call on their millions of listeners to join the fight to save Internet radio and contact their Congressional representatives to ask for their support of the Internet Radio Equality Act."

Many webcasters including WCH Radio and The Wave are planning to shut off access to their streams as well as our podcasts, while other webcasters plan to replace their music streams with long periods of silence (or static or ocean sounds or similar) interspersed with occasional brief public service announcements on the subject.

This "Day of Silence" is an encore of a successful media event initiated by RAIN and organized by small webcasters on May 1st, 202 in response to a similar royalty rate ruling from a Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) five years ago. That event garnered national attention and was subsequently followed by a rate cut by the Librarian of Congress and the passage of the Small Webcaster Settlement Act for the period 1998 - 2005.

We hope that we can count on your support, and for more information please log on to:

http://www.savenetradio.org/

We have also just learned that congress is currently meeting on the issue.

We especially want to thank all of you who have supported our stations and Internet radio.

This is a Press Release

:
Views: 662

Back 26.06.2007