p2pnet.net news:- Canadian rock star Bryan Adams doesn’t want to see rates hiked for streaming Net radio.

Earlier, in our story on the US Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) decision to uphold an increase in royalty rates, we said entertainment lawyer Fred Wilhelms is collecting signatures from interested people and parties who are against the hike.

“It’s time you let your voice be heard,” her told clients and artists. “Call, write, and email your Senators and Congressperson. Links to find their addresses can be found below. Let them know you think the new CRB royalty rates will be a disaster for Internet radio, for its audiences and for the artists.”

It’s, “my firm belief, shared by almost everyone not on the CRB or working for SoundExchange, that the new rates will severely cripple Internet radio by leaving it in the hands of a small group of well-heeled players,” he told us when he launched the list.

“In other words, it will look, and sound, exactly like terrestrial radio. All those great places to hear new and unusual music, and even ‘niche’ genres like soul, jazz, blues and folk, are in jeopardy of closing down, or moving their operations outside the US, where the artists won’t get paid for the use of their recordings.”

Now p2pnet has heard from Wilhelms naming some of the artists who are protesting against the increase, and among them is Adams. Others include: Damon Ayala; Harold Brown; Morris Dickerson; Jack Ely; Mark Farner; Mike Felten ; Stewart Francke; Adie Grey; Carlos Guitarlos; Sarah Lee Guthrie; Betty Harris; Brian Hyland; Johnny Irion; Al Kooper; Bettye LaVette; Michelle Lundeen; Dave MacKenzie; Scott McClatchy; Sam Moore; Lee Oskar; Mzwandile Qotoyi; Moody Scott; Howard Scott; Robbin Thompson and Ellen Whyte.

Below is the letter signed by first batch of people who’ve signed the artist letter opposing the CRB rates. More are on the way >>>>>>>>

Among us, we have quite a number of gold and platinum records and almost too many awards to count. Some of us have been recording for nearly 50 years.

Many of us are recording today, but you wouldn’t know it from AM or FM radio. At best, you might hear one or two of our old songs every once in a while on

some Oldies station. You never hear our new stuff.

So we LOVE Internet radio. There are Internet stations that play our older stuff, which is great. Even better, there are Internet stations that play our new songs, and people who have heard them tell us we sound better than ever. Those stations are often run by fans who love the music as much as we do. They aren’t in it to make money; they want to share what they love, and they are even willing to pay royalties out of their own pocket to webcast our music.

Now, many of those Internet stations that we love are in danger of being turned off forever.

In March, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) of the Library of Congress announced a set of new royalty rates for Internet radio stations. Instead of giving these stations an option to pay a percentage of what they made from advertising, or setting up a single amount for non-commercial and hobbyist stations to pay, the CRB established high rates that will drive all but the biggest stations off the ‘Net.

We think that what’s going to be left will sound like regular AM and FM radio. That means you won’t be hearing us much on the Internet (which means, anywhere at all) unless these rates are changed.

SoundExchange, the organization that collects those royalties and pays them out to us, is saying it thinks there are too many Internet stations, and that maybe the ones that can’t make money should be “weeded out” for the good of the artists. We don’t understand how having fewer stations playing music can be good for artists. The more stations there are, the more music, and more artists, will be heard. That’s just logical. It’s also what really is good for the artists.

The idea of “weeding out” stations that don’t make enough money to pay the royalties is just ridiculous. A station that has to sell advertising to make enough to pay the royalties is going to have to increase its audience so that it can charge more for commercials. That means it’s going to have play music thousands of people will tune into more of the time. That means it will sound like regular radio. Another regular radio channel not only won’t do us any good, it will do us harm.

Don’t get us wrong. We like to be paid for our music. Internet stations should pay a reasonable fee for playing our music. Big commercial stations should pay what a big commercial station can afford, small commercial stations should pay what they can afford, and college, non-commercial, and hobbyist stations should pay a reasonable fee, too. That’s a fair solution: They get to play our music. We get heard, and we get paid. Those stations keep broadcasting, which means they keep paying the fees, and we keep getting paid. That sounds like everyone wins.

These fees should all go through SoundExchange, too, because if they do, we get our share. That’s the law. Under the new system, the label can take the Internet license fees directly, and they don’t have to pay the artists anything. Our experience is that if they don’t have to pay us, they won’t.

We already have heard about some radio services negotiating directly with the labels, and that isn’t good news for artists. SoundExchange has quoted some artists who are defending the high royalty rates, but we suspect those artists don’t know the whole story.

In 2002, the Library of Congress announced royalty rates that threatened to kill Internet radio before it began. It literally took an act of Congress to replace those rates with something more reasonable and logical. The result was a structure that allowed Internet radio to grow and prosper, and that got many of us paid the first royalty checks we’d seen in a long, long time.

If you agree with Adams and the others, you can let your congressperson know. Use the Online Directory for the 110th Congress.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
against the hike - Has the bell tolled for Net radio?, April 16, 2007
launched the list - Dear SoundExchange ……, April 11, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 9:39 am and is filed under Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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