Jari Ketola
30 Apr 2002 16:25
Independent Webcasters plan to cut their music streams on Wednesday to protest a proposed royalty fee. The fee, proposed by Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), would effectively force all Webcasters to shut down their services for good. The proposed rates are 0.14 cents per listener per song, and 0.07 cents per song for streaming a regular over-the-air broadcast on the Net. That is, however, much more than what the revenues for online music services currently are.
"Webcasters are angry that CARP would charge them on a per-stream basis, rather than as a percentage of revenues," said Susan Kevorkian, a research analyst at IDC, a Framingham, Mass.-based research firm. "The latter is generally thought to be more of a fair approach."
Currently the expenses for running a radio on the Net are easily greater than the advertising and/or subscription income, so there might be no revenues at all for some services.