David Byrne, the former Talking Head who has remained on the cutting edge through his continued musical exploration and incorporation of music from around the world (through his label, Luaka Bop), runs his own online radio station.
Byrne doesn't make money from the webcast -- in fact, it already costs him $2,000 a month in licensing fees, bandwidth, and admin payments to Live365. As a small webcaster and major artist/cultural commentator, he opposes the Copyright Royalty Board's recent embrace of SoundExchange's proposed royalty rates.
The new rates, which charge stations on a per listener basis rather than as a percentage of revenue, will drive Byrne's costs up an estimated 20% (the station averages about 40,000 listener hours per month) unless the decision is overturned by Congress or the CRB itself. Other stations that barely get by today will be forced to shut down, become extremely commercial, or find other sources of revenue.
In a recent blog post, David Byrne and Danielle Spencer offer a well-informed take on the situation, showing why the decision as it stands now represents a loss for democracy, and attacking the way record labels claim that it will benefit artists -- since "most never see money from their record companies anyway":
"For NPR stations it is a different story as they have widerlistenership than I and would pay the same royalty rates as commercialbroadcasters. KCRW estimates roughly that as this ruling isretroactive they would owe $130,000 in additional fees for 2006 and$237,000 for 2007. WXPN in Philly estimates $1,000,000. In some worldsthis is not a big deal but as one can imagine many of these stationsbarely eek by as it is, so this could very likely shut down thewebcasting side of many of them. That would be a shame, as thesestations are the only source of, well, good music, alternative soundsand innovative and informative programming in the U.S. It would be aloss for, well, democracy, as democracy depends on availability of manypoints of view untainted by commercial concerns and pressures. A trulyinformed populace, in other words. It points to another victory for theoligarchs — the big 5 record companies and the media companies that ownthem. Count one more for the big guys. The reasoning that it's for thebenefit of the artists rings a little hollow as most artists heard thisargument re: cracking down on file sharing, and most never see moneyfrom their record companies anyway -- so the line about 'we're doing itfor you' is pretty suspect.
"Who is this agency that is proposing making this change? They arenot an elected body -- the Copyright Royalty Board is made up of a fewpeople appointed by the Library of Congress Copyright Office. They usedto be a group of arbitrators but since 2004 they are a group of judges.
(I wonder if Gonzales, Cheney etc. have any pals in there?)"
David Byrne - Your Government Working for You
David Byrne's online radio station (consisting of his current listening playlist)
(via RAIN)
