GranolaBox

I sit about eight feet away from Rob for hours every day, in our cramped little living room that temporarily serves as an office (temporarily, if you measure in something with a half-life). Unlike Rob, I have pedestrian taste in music. Unlike Rob, I retain a fondness for Neil Diamond, and even more offensive relics of my eighties/gen-x coming of age.

I spend a lot of time hacking away at my online business, trying to carve out my spot in Capitalism in General. During this process, I consume music in a way that makes most musically-inclined people want to join a commune somewhere on a different coast. I consume it in great quantities, and without discrimination.

For a while, this was sort of okay. Because I could go to shoutcast.com and tune into whatever online radio station that suited my mood or workload: Desi (Indian expatriate) pop, various flavors of new age, adult alternative, or most annoyingly, All Hip Hop, All the Time. But then something terrible happened.

One day, I went through my disorganized list of station “bookmarks.” One by one, they came back, “No Service Available.” I had a bad feeling.

And sure enough, my trek back to the shoutcast website revealed:

The Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC has more than tripled the royalty rates for webcasters and if left unchanged they will *KILL* Internet radio. These exorbitant rates go into effect on May 15, less than a month from now (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). Without Congressional action the majority of webcasters will go bankrupt and silent on this date.

Note the retroactive nature of the price hike. Note the potential illegality and typical hamfistedness involved. Note the signature odor of the RIAA, sort of like a combination of rotting subfloor and busted garbage disposal.

Eventually, I think, the RIAA will find their true place in the world, which is nowhere. We don’t need middlemen like them anymore. The artists don’t need them — the artists are milked like cattle, charged up the heiny for every imaginable expense and nudged out of most of the profits. Forget health insurance. And forget pensions. A lot of former big names die broke. The RIAA doesn’t benefit anyone, anywhere, but themselves.

But in the meantime, their job is to sue college students and single moms, and bulldoze through congress a bill that charges tiny webmaster-run radio stations, retroactively, any old fee they feel like.

Which is why I was delighted to find netmusique.com, a webcasting station that bills itself as RIAA-free radio. It’s sounding oh-so-sweet to my ears about now.

Technorati Tags: Internet radio, shoutcast, netmusique, webcasting, RIAA

By the Way …
If you’re looking for an easy way to get across your displeasure about the death of Internet radio (and corporate meanies that bowl over government boards), SaveNetRadio.org has put together a great 10-second form that helps you send the message to your local representatives.

Filed under: General Observations on April 23rd, 2007