Your Government Is At It Again!

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, my favorite online place to be, finds himself and his company in the cross-hairs of the government. Let him tell you about it:

RIAA’s new royalty rates will kill online radio!!

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has recently released a revised fee schedule for internet radio. Left unchanged, these rates will end internet radio, period. The RIAA has effectively convinced this federal committee to establish rates that make online radio a non-viable business.

It’s an utterly ridiculous ruling that renders any form of internet radio non-economic. We are continuing in the belief that sanity will return as everyone involved, including the 50 million avid online radio listeners, realize just how outrageous this is.

You can probably tell by this post that I feel strongly about this. Online radio has opened up a new world for musicians and listeners alike. It has brought millions of otherwise disconnected music-lovers back to music radio, and has opened up tremendous access and promotion for thousands of musicians – both obscure and well known.

We are striving very hard to build a business. We employ eleven full time people in our ad sales team, and despite very high licensing and streaming costs, believed that we could make it work over the next several years if internet advertising continues to grow. This ruling drives the licensing fees (fees that are NOT paid by terrestrial broadcasters) completely out of reach, and makes our goal impossible.

This is a terribly ill-conceived attempt to crush a powerful and positive grassroots movement that is sweeping across the music world. The record labels’ struggles have nothing to do with online radio and killing it will further hurt their business, not help it.

We need your help. If you’d like to get involved please write your congressperson. Below is a link to point you to the right person. If you can, please send a letter or a fax that asks for a reply (emails are too easily ignored).

Congressional Directory by Zip Code

If you want to learn more details, try this informative blog post from an attorney familiar with the process:

Now more than ever, thanks for your support.

Tim (Founder)

I’ve been listening to Pandora every day for a long, long time and I love it. My only problem is deciding which of ‘my’ radio stations to play!

For those of you not familiar with Pandora, check out The Music Genome Project for an excellent explanation of just what Tim has done and why he did it. This is a fascinating project – one which should not be killed by government interference.

Whether you are a fan of online music or not, this should be a warning to us all. The government is coming to regulate the internet. Who is speaking for us? We have no lobby in Washington so we must speak for ourselves. Get involved in this now – before it’s too late.

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