Music Must Really Hate it's Consumers

OK, maybe the title of this post is unfair, but hear me out.

I don't normally like posting this sort of thing, after all, this is a review blog, not a political commentary blog, but I think of this as a negative review of the buffoons running things, both in government and the private sector. And, this happens to be a subject that affects me(and millions of others) in a very real way.

A decision was recently made, you may have heard, by an obscure panel of judges attached to the Library of Congress. How the *Library* of Congress has authority over anything is beyond me, but apparently they do. What this ruling will do is increase royalty costs for digital audio streams such as Internet radio and the Internet based streams of traditional broadcast stations. It will increase these costs exponentially. Of course the company in charge of collecting royalties is in full support of this new fee structure. I'm sure it means they collect more money for themselves as well.

The worst part of the new ruling is that it violates one of the most basic elements of good lawmaking. It is RETROACTIVE. Imagine if this retroactive aspect was applied to another part of daily life such as driving. The government decides that the new legal driving age is 30 and they make the ruling apply retroactively to anyone who was driving up to 10 years ago. Every person between the age of 16 and 39 that drove is now a criminal. Or, let's imagine that the tax rate is increased to 50% across the board and is retroactive 5 years. That means that you now must pay 50% of the money you made for the last five years immediately or you will go to jail. How many people could afford to pay that over 5 years much less all at once?

So what? Well, the new fee structure means that most small Internet radio stations will be required to pay royalties greater than their average yearly gross every year, in addition to the chunk of change they now owe for the last 15 months. It means smaller broadcast radio stations that simul-cast online will no longer be able to afford their Internet streams and will get rid of them. It means I will no longer be able to listen to music from across the globe and know what to look for when I walk into the music store. It means I will no longer be able to listen to my favourite radio stations I discovered while traveling or living in other states. It means the number of mp3s I have to download to determine whether a CD is worth buying or not will go up. It means I have to listen to morons go on and on about how drunk they got last night and how pretty this new handbag is every morning instead of listening to what I want to: music.

I started listening to Internet radio because it gave me access to music I would never hear on broadcast radio. I can listen to techno from Sweden, I can listen to a garage band from Brooklyn, I can listen to an artist who died before I was born. I can listen to music in the morning instead of some talk show host that thinks he or she is more important or more entertaining than they really are.

My favourite Internet radio company is Accuradio. I listen to it every day. I listen to it the entire time I'm at my desk at work. It will be forced out of business when the new royalty rules come into effect. Many others like Accuradio will be forced out of business at the same time and I will have very little I can listen to. Goodbye music from Japan, goodbye guitarist from down the street, goodbye Billy Holiday.

Please, please, please, if you listen to Internet radio at all, I highly encourage you to find out more and to speak out by visiting Save the Streams.