Bad news for radio stations that play music online: The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board has decided to hike royalty fees for songs that are Webcast.
The new rates — which will apply retroactively, dating back to last year — will increase sharply over the next several years, according to Wired News‘s Listening Post blog. Stations will have to pay $.0008 per listener for every song they streamed last year; by 2010 they will owe $.0019 to Webcast one song to one listener. Those costs may sound trivial, but they add up: The Radio and Internet Newsletter, which has opposed the royalty increase, estimates that under the 2006 rate, the average Internet radio station will have to pay more than 1 cent per hour for each of its listeners.
For stations that broadcast at all hours, that’s a considerable financial burden. But will college stations feel the crunch? That remains to be seen. In 2003 the stations worked out a deal with the recording industry that let them pay a flat annual rate instead of a per-song fee, but it’s unclear whether that deal will be extended for the duration of the new rate scale. —Brock Read
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