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If you're planning on attending this week's R&R
Convention, please join us for the RAIN Reader
Cocktail Party, in conjunction with the Strategic Media
Research Pizza Party. We'll be on the outdoor patio
of Harper's Bar & Grill,
directly across the street from the Century Plaza Hotel,
on Friday afternoon (that's tomorrow!) from 4-6PM!
We've flown in lots of complimentary deep-dish Chicago-style
pizza and will have a nice spread of other excellent appetizers
too. (Albeit a cash bar.) Please join us and bring your
friends!
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From TheStandard.com: "To most, the battle over online
music is about whether artists should be paid...But
as the labels clearly know, this battle has little to do with whether
artists get paid. The real issue is
innovation,
not compensation, and a lawsuit filed in California last
week shows just why...
"The issue here goes way beyond Internet radio...
"The DMCA's compulsory licensing provision was to be
a limited compromise. Artists could get paid and innovators could
invent. Indeed, here was a class of innovators who
had a single message for the labels: Let us pay you. But -- surprise,
surprise -- almost three years after the DMCA was passed, the labels
have failed to agree on terms. The labels demand a price 30 to 40
times what Webcasters reasonably believe their content is worth.
And now the labels have launched yet more lawsuits against the most
innovative members of this struggling industry.
"Hey Congress, the labels are playing you. They have
no intention of allowing innovation
in a means of distribution that they can't control...
"Congress should listen to what the market says. When innovators
controlled the future of online
music, billions flowed to that market. Once the courts made it clear
that dinosaurs were in control, billions quickly evaporated. Congress
could flip this market around in a single legislative stroke: Pass
a law setting compulsory rates for Webcasting of whatever form,
as well as rates for downloading and distributing music. And if
this debate really is about compensation, then while they are at
it, Congress could require that 75 percent of the income from this
new, wholly unexpected stream of revenue flow to the artists, and
not to the labels."
Read this entire editorial
here.
From the press release: "Following a successful pilot
test by NetRadio,
Arbitron Inc. has launched a new
webcast audience measurement service which gathers audience demographics
of individual streaming media channels.
"Called Webcast Audience Profile, the new Arbitron
measurement service uses a pop-up survey on webcasters' sites
to gather demographic, socioeconomic and Internet usage information.
The pop-up technology is unique because the survey does not interrupt
the webcast programming 
or
content.
"The initial Arbitron Webcast Audience Profile revealed
that listeners of NetRadio channels are well-educated, upscale
and Internet-savvy. Nearly three quarters (73 percent) of NetRadio's
audience graduated college or have postgraduate degrees and one
in five (19 percent) live in homes with more than $100,000 annual
income...
"Arbitron's Webcast Audience Profile, now available
to clients, will become part of Arbitron Webcast Ratings.
Read the press release here.
Reprinted from yesterday (updated)...
RAIN Publisher and president Kurt Hanson
(pictured right) will moderate one of two panels dealing with
radio and the
Internet at this week's R&R Convention in Los Angeles.
The panel, called "To Stream or Not to Stream" will
deal with challenges facing webcasters and broadcasters in their
efforts to stream on the Internet. This of course includes DMCA-related
issues, concerns over RIAA royalty demands, and the recent controversy
involving webcasting and AFTRA (American Federation of Television
and Radio Artists).
Featured speakers include Matthis L. Dunn Jr. from AFTRA;
David Helfant of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer, and Feld; Clear Channel
Interactive president Kevin
Mayer, Edison Media Research president Larry Rosin, and John Simson
representing the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)
and SoundExchange. The panel is scheduled for
this
afternoon from 3:30-5PM.
Preceding this panel today (scheduled from 1:30-3PM) will
be "Using Your Website to Create Listener Loyalty,"
hosted by David Lawrence (pictured left), host of "
Net
Music Countdown" and "
Online
Tonight with David Lawrence."
According to Lawrence, during the presentation he intends
to deal with the topics of whether station web sites can ever
be significant revenue generators (or at least drive listener
loyalty), and questions of "sticky" content, standards,
and proven web techniques.
Clear Channel Interactive's John Duncan, LMiV CEO Jack
Swarbrick, DMR's Tripp Eldredge, and Courtney Holt of Interscope
Records are the scheduled panelists for this session.
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BY PAUL MALONEY
RAIN has learned from an inside source that the latest LMiV-powered
website is now available on the
web, and several more are ready to launch.
According to an Emmis Broadcasting memo sent out yesterday,
as of Monday night, the new Q101 (Alternative WKQX-FM/Chicago)
website is now operational. The "soft-launch" beta version
of the site is available
here.
According to the memo, Emmis has pointed the 50,000 Q101
listeners in the station's database to the site, and will officially
launch with an on-air promotion on or around June 21. Further,
the brief mentioned that LMiV has also launched a site for Corus
Toronto station "Energy FM" (
here),
and will soon unveil new web fronts for Entercom's KNRK/Portland
(
here) and Jefferson
Pilot's WSTR/Atlanta (
here)
-- with more on the way ("WIBC, HOT97 and Power 106"
were mentioned).
The Local Media Internet Venture (LMiV) is a joint effort
by several broadcasting companies to establish an industry-owned
network with large scale resources to provide content, technology,
and marketing to local member station websites. Participating
broadcasters include Emmis, Bonneville, Greater Media, Jefferson-Pilot,
and Corus. The CEO is Jack Swarbrick. In April, the LMiV launched
their first site at Bonneville's WTOP-AM/Washington (
here).
