So I am sorry to say that after three years of broadcasting, due to a change in the US copyright royalties for net radio stations, I can no longer afford to run IRE Radio (formerly Lusternia Radio), and so it will be going off the air at the end of the month. Unless someone can find several thousand dollars to meet the new royalty charges.

Just to give you a quick rundown basically everytime we play a song, for each person listening to it we have to pay a small royalty fee, depending on where you are from we pay different royalties agencies, and from now on, anyone in the US will be costing us twice as much as they used to. On top of this the British royalties agency have said that they think it is likely that theirs will be increasing in the near future as well.

More info here http://www.freewebs.com/ireradio/

Whichever politician initiated that change should have his ass hauled to Astral and gangbanged by all the monstrosities that reside there.

Join the Queue, CEO of Pandora is first in line, he is convinced it will send Pandora bust

http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted...

But i love IRE radio and Pandora

My congresspeople will be getting a call.

At those times, one wishes he had an extra ICBM lying around. The US congress needs a nuking.

After a rather painful read, I've determined that IRE Radio's yearly cost by this new ruling is $500. You're way, way, waaaaay under the cap. It's still a raw deal, but I think it's important that you operate with proper information.

No I have to pay Soundexchange $500, there are two further US royalty agencies to pay, plus 2 british royalty agencies, plus technically I should also be paying Australian and Singaporean royalty agencies, but I generally let that slide and just hope. It means I have to totally change the way I log everything...and oh yeah, its back dated to the start of last year. I cannot afford this.

Just to compare currently it is allowed that we pay a percentage of what we earn, which is nothing and so I just have to pay the minimum monthly amount, but you have to pay royalties, to the artist representative, to the producers representative and to the writers representatives (even if all three are the same person you just pay 3 times). CUrrently I pay ignoring the server fees just short of $40 a month in royalties to the US agencies, plus another $70 a month to ths British royalty agencies. so currently I pay $110 x 12 which is just over $1200 a year assuming the other US agencies don't change their fees (which is unlikely) my current monthly payments would remain pretty much the same plus an additional $500 for the year. Then the british agencies are saying they are doubling theirs, which would be an aditional $70 a month. And I would have to change my server set up to one where I can catch the location of each listener and which songs they listen to. Which would increase my hosting costs about 3 fold. its a lot of extra money, and whilst my initial $6000 was wrong (this is because they have changed it so that small webcasters don't have to be regitered NPOs) its still a lot more than thae already huge sum I pay for running this thing

I'm not sure I understand, then.

SoundExchange is the body designated to collect royalty fees. This $500 isn't their minimum royalty fee? It's...$500 for the right to transmit information over the Internet?

Ok, figured out the difference, and now I'm more upset than before.

Royalties come in two forms: royalties to the musicians, those who wrote and own the song, and royalties to the studios, those who compiled and own the recording.

Traditional broadcast radio does not pay any royalties to the studios based on the premise that the recording is not being distributed--just the song. However, that law that's done plenty of harm loooong before now, the Digital Millenium Copyright act, says that, in the case of digital radio, recordings are being distributed.

The problem seems to be something that reaches farther back than the recent ruling. It's more of a misunderstanding of how music can be taken from various sources that's been written into law for eight or nine years now. As I'm sure most people realize, if you want to record music from the radio, all you need is a half-decent stereo with a cassette player. Furthermore, by law, this form of recording a transmission is legal, and no technology exists to do anything about it. If you want to record music from Net radio, you need a ripper of some sort. I believe, but am not sure, that ripping copyrighted material from digital broadcasts is illegal. Technology exists that can interrupt streaming content rippers. Anecdotally, the technology is 100% successful against current piracy techniques. Even if the technology is compromised, I don't know of any Net radio station that transmits CD-quality music.

So, when you're writing your representatives (which I encourage you to do--I can't speak to all of yours, but I know mine are highly decent and responsive individuals who come right out and say that they need informed citizens to brief them on issues), don't beat on this ruling. Rather, encourage a moratorium on collecting royalty fees until the DMCA can be reviewed.

If they are, according to the law, distributing recordings, and PAYING to do so, why is there anti-ripping tech in place, and why do I have to go out of my damn way to even rip them in the first place? You can't have it both ways. They're either distributing them, or they're not. How many other things are charged a fee because of the chance they might be pirated? I don't have to pay twice for a CD I buy in a store because I might let my friend listen to it.

I'm gonna do the UF thing and blame the RIAA for this...

EDIT: Don't take that last part too seriously.

See I'd just do it all illegally and hope for the best. I do a lot of things that way.

I feel for you . Thanks for running it for so long.

NPR has been having thier usual "give us money" drive, and they mentioned this in it.

It sounds to me like its something that all radio stations have to do, not just online ones.

My guess is that radio station owners lobbied for this, so they could get more advertising.

Sadly, you already are. Figured into the cost of any CD you purchase is a "anti-piracy" amount, which is essentially a punishment to you for paying for the CD in an attempt to regain some of the money they lose on ripped data. This is much the same as how software companies include a fee in their product to reflect lost revenue on stolen date.

Clear Channel and NPR were in the legal case against SoundExchange. They were trying to get a better deal. Granted, many Clear Channel and NPR stations also have streaming web presences.

I have some potentially good news. But its down to whether you as listeners would be interested. Using some contacts from when I used to do Sound Engineering I have spoken to a group a independent record labels, and have gained their permission to use their promo tracks royalty free on the Station. They currently have about 23,000 promo tracks from a massive range of music styles. But it does mean we wouldn't be playing the more popular music you would be used to.

Would you all be interested in listening if we went along this line. If so, I can speak to a few more record labels about it and see what we get.

IRE Radio and indie, a perfect match to me.

This sounds really interesting, and I'd love to try it. Like Karell said, some of the indie stuff is the best. Case in point: Iron Realms.