Web radio is toast
Found on The Inquirer on Sunday, 17 August 2008
SoundExchange claims higher royalties for Internet radio because it says musicians deserve a bigger cut of Internet radio profits. But it strangely ignores the fact that if an Internet radio shuts then musicians will not get anything.
SoundExchange claims that it the Internet Radio stations fault that they have not tried to work out ways to make money out of playing the songs.
Now the radio station will have to pay royalties to SoundExchange even though the artist has not signed a contract with the organisation. Any cash SoundExchange collects will not go to the artist but will be saved up to give an RIAA executive a holiday somewhere hot with their secretary.
Funny, they blame web radios of being unable to make money from their listeners, something the music industry fails even worse at. Their incompetence at adapting to new business models to replace their outdated one is baffling. Instead, they try all sorts of legal fireworks to extort others. When stumpling over news like this one, I hope that filesharing will increase even more and more.