I'm reprinting it here, hope you will help us reach Congress on this one.
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Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,
I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.
In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.
Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetr
Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.
Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.
I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.
As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.
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2 comments:
Very interesting. I had always understood that the music industry had some pretty one sided deals in reference to how artist get paid. It really pays to understand how the animal works. What does this mean for the artist? How can they better navigate the business side. I believe many would be willing to do more if necessary. Mr Minter explains that they already have to do quite alot after a deal has been made. Its too bad the artist doesn't have some sort of hourly contract limit or increase in profit sharing. It sounds like the industry generally gets the artist to do unlimited hours of work for contract price with no overtime paid. How they get away with that?
This is a general industry theme, artist will screw other artist. I performed in a band called Blue October in 2002 - 2003, recorded and toured with them. They were a Universal Music Group signed artist. Then after less than a year they decided we weren't working out. So one of the managers gets his girlfriend to play in place of me. OK fine I wouldn't want to force them to use me but here is the problem. I was getting paid as a band member for at 5 or 6 months of our engagement. Band members got paid a stipend of like $1000 a month. I was out on the road working just like every other member getting paid the same. The music was on a major movie soundtrack - American Pie, American Wedding . They sold some album for History For Sale. Where was my cut? I worked as a band member, was paid as a band member. The music industry seems to get away with more than the should be able to.
So in essence the music industry ,Universal Music Group and the band can make mistakes. Most businesses are held to the fire by some state entity. If they perform bad business practices such as this they can be punished or made to pay by the state. Is this the case for the Music Industry?
Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue...................................................
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