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Save Net Radio Campaign Builds Up Steam
• Campaign supporters flood Congress with faxes
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By
The Minx , Enertainment
Friday,
27 April, 2007
Internet radio stations are warning they could be forced off the air by a big increase in the royalties they pay to play music.
The warning comes after a decision by a US copyright body to increase royalty payments for music via the net. Commercial webcasters in the US now face the prospect of paying more than twice as much for every track they play.
Interactive services like Pandora and Last.fm say they could be badly hit. These kinds of websites have attracted a growing audience by offering users their own personalised radio station. Tim Westergren founder of Pandora has been running a high profile campaign to stop the planned increases.
More than 200,000 Pandora listeners contacted their congressional representatives to protest at planned increases in listening royalties which could force Internet radio stations like Pandora and last.fm off the air. The entire fax infrastructure on Capitol Hill ground to a halt as listeners faxed in their protests.
Here is the latest update:
Message from Tim Westergren (Pandora Founder)
27 April 2007
Hi, Tim again,
First, I wanted to thank you again for the support last week. It was absolutely overwhelming. More than 200,000 Pandora listeners contacted their congressional representatives! The entire fax infrastructure on Capitol Hill ground to a halt. We had to deliver faxes manually - literally boxes full of them were delivered to every office in the Capitol building.
The result has been swift and dramatic: more than a million people have already joined the cause! There is now a bill just being introduced called the "Internet Radio Equality Act, H.R. 2060" to fix the problem and save Internet radio -and Pandora- from obliteration.
I'd like to ask you to do one more thing which is to call and ask your Congressperson, Todd Russell Platts, to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act, H.R. 2060: Todd Russell Platts's phone number: (202)225-5836
This fight for our life is not over, but there has been a marked shift in momentum. Thanks to your efforts, this vital channel for musical diversity has a hope of finally being treated fairly and being allowed to grow and nurture a newly empowered class of independent musicians.
Your opinion matters to your representatives - so please take just a minute to call.
Visit www.savenetradio.org to continue following the fight to Save Internet Radio.
Thanks again for being such a wonderful supporter
[italic ]Tim
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Pandora - The Music Genome Project
Tim Westergren founded Pandora Internet Radio in January 2000 and now serves as its Chief Strategy Officer. Tim is an award-winning composer, an accomplished musician and a record producer with 20 years of experience in the music industry. In addition to guiding Pandora's overall strategy and vision, Tim now spends most of his time as Pandora's chief evangelist - traveling the country to meet with listeners to collect feedback, research local music, and spread the word of the Music Genome Project.
The team of fifty musician-analysts have been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song for the last seven years. The Pandora project has
created an interface to make this available to music lovers and use this musical 'connective-tissue' to discover new music based on songs or artists they already know.
Just drop the name of one of your favorite songs or artists into Pandora and let the Genome Project go. It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings - new and old, well known and completely obscure - to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. Then sit back and enjoy as it creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs for you.
You can create as many "stations" as you want. And you can even refine them. If it's not quite right you can tell it more and it will get better for you.
Onthe Lam 2007
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