Help Save Internet Radio

[QforQ]

Hello everyone, I wanted to make some sort of statement about today's Internet Radio Day of Silence. No, Uberguilds Radio will not be going offline today..but I still would like to use this opportunity to inform you about the realities of what internet radio is facing as an industry.

On March 2nd the Copyright Royalty Board announced their decision to raise the fees we pay to Sound Exchange, an organization that represents performing artists. Every internet radio station has to pay these guys when they broadcast, so it isn't something we can get around.

These rates have increased a ridiculous amount and to illustrate that I'll say this. Right now we pay roughly 700$ or so a year for all our royalties. With this new increase, we're looking at paying $10,000-$75,000 a year just to Sound Exchange. I hope that tells you how serious this is to our industry and shows how hard it will make it for stations like us.

I chose not to turn of Uberguilds Radio for a day because it would be a very unwise decision on my part. If we chose to not broadcast this early into the station's infancy we would quite literally die. Believe me, if a station goes offline for even a few hours you notice its repercussions for days after, or even weeks. It would be very very difficult for us to recover from being offline for a day, so that is why I chose not to. I instead opted to try to inform our listeners about the seriousness of this issue and what it means to people like you, internet radio enthusiasts.

I hope you understand the choice I had to make and I encourage you to please go to http://www.SaveNetRadio.org to contact your representatives today!

Sincerely,
Sam Houston

[coldacid]

all i gotta say music industry is dead set on makin there money. they blam it on one thing and another. record sales are not good cause of this and that. it is just the simple fact that the bands they are signing these days are mostly copy crap of a band that has hit it big. big name artiest are still bringing as much money as they did before any issues with the internet. pretty muc hthey are just trying to take controll of content played with this little stunt. cut out all the small guys that are out there then buy shares in the guys that can afford to stay around and run it there way. go big brother.

[PerritoBites]

Why does it seems like money always f*ck stuff up? This year i have been exposed to a lot of internet broadcasted shows, which include radio stations and what would be online tv shows. These shows are so good because you don't have to deal with the commercials or the censorships that occur on commercial radio/tv. If they raise the price for broadcasting prices so much, wouldn't this be forcing them to become what commercial radio is right now? Full of crap nobody wants to listen to? (MTV, TechTv, even movies have been affected by this evil) I guess it is part of capitalism :/

[QforQ]

Yeah you're pretty much right. Already large internet radio stations are looking to move into this medium and take over. If they can get the little guys out of the way and move in, more money for them(both Sound Exchange and the radio stations).

Hopefully with your hope we can get these bills passed!

[coldacid]

they will always try to stop somthing. people can never be happy. if people are happy that means they are not makin peoples pockets suffer enuff. *sniff sniff* can you smell the blood?

[Anders]

It just isn't a NetRadio issue, there's all sorts of pending issues for the Internet as a whole right now that are really going to cause some serious issues if people don't start standing up and telling people to go F themselves. =/