Let it sing
Let it die
…
Maintain a little
(take the cynical saint to the stake and burn it)
… Its radio radio silence silence.
… Harvey Danger, Radio Silence.
The Internet community is protesting the radio royalty charge increases that threatens many small webcasters by going silent today. Yahoo Music Is Silent. So is Pandora. Is the protest justified?
Yes
‘playable search’ to the rescue?
http://digg.com/music/Internet_Radio_Silent_Playable_search_results_to_the_rescue
Yes. Very much justified.
As I wrote in a recent post, it’s probably a manifestation of fear of the Internet; the bigshots at RIAA are scared that net radio somehow makes it easy to pirate music, so they’re imposing an unreasonable fee. Their line of thinking is: if they survive, we get more money. If they don’t survive, even better.
So yes, the protest is definitely justified.
Last.fm, recently aquired by CBS, says they’re not participating. I’d imagine most would disagree, and cite their new corporate backing, but I think they make a fair point.
http://blog.last.fm/2007/06/25/make-some-noise
Justified: yes. Effective: no. Generally, protests are effective when they service to turn the tide of public opinion resulting in material pressure. In this case, public opinion of the RIAA is already quite low so an effect on public opinion is of marginal utility. Further, the RIAA, Stan mentions above, had carefully calculated the risks and benefits before engaging the industry in the courts. I believe they are very concerned about plummeting CD sales and Apple’s power of them in on-line distribution. The RIAA know they need a new channel of distribution but they are also puzzled as to how to monetize internet distribution and garner the stellar margins they are used to receiving. They know internet radio wasn’t rewarding them, so decided to either monetize it or kill it. I wonder what their fallback plan is after they’ve strangled it. Apple DRM-less iTunes? I don’t think that will sustain them without substantially lowering their profitability and top line. I see the RIAA’s demands as an act of foolish desperation.
kexp still up and running!
A more effective protest would be to boycott all major labels for a year and promote unsigned bands on internet radio.
yea. i don’t see how this is effective. while this may be an easy time to bash last.fm, what does this day of silence really accomplish? i don’t see how this is effective in the least bit.
The Music Industry has allowed Pandora’s box to be opened already, you can’t shut it now.
Is this effective – maybe not, but its more effective than not doing it.
It most certainly is:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2yp4jn
The loss of the likes of Radio Paradise, KEXP, KCRW, Bluegrass Radio, Folk Alley, SKY.FMs Reggae and Classical stations would be a tremendous loss.
These stations occupy a very much needed gap in the spectrum of music broadcasting.
As far as I can tell this new legislation is based on lobbying from the RIAA premised on a misrepresentation of the technology.
http://www.savenetradio.org/
If these stations go silent, sites like pitchfork, stereogum and cbcradio3, etc will continue to introduce new music to a narrower audience, and our days and nights of wonder and delight listening to crafted playlists by thoughful and talented DJs will be replaced by days listening to less splendid burned mp3 CDs that present individual experiences of no greater benefit to the RIAA and the interests they purport to serve.
Yes its justified! We have the right to free music, as long as we dont pirate the music then yea we have the right to free music!
Here’s why I suspect the Record industry is working so hard to curb niche internet radio stations and are propping commercial radio. From the recent Rolling Stone article:
More people listening to and buying a wider range of music and digital singles rather than hard copies of albums means that sales are no longer concentrated on the high margin LP sales of the past.