From Wired News: "'The RIAA is a cartel.' That's the warning Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban has for webcasters who want to get into the music-streaming business."

(Pictured at right: RAIN photo of Cuban being interviewed on stage by Jason Calacanis at the Digital Coast 2000 conference in Los Angeles two weeks ago.)

"Through a series of email interviews, Cuban laid out the strategy that the recording industry has used in its attempt to negotiate licensing deals with various webcasters -- deals that he claims will put any for-profit webcasters out of business...

"Those who are negotiating are getting two deals, Cuban said: Either pay the RIAA a percentage of revenues or get charged one-third of a penny to one-half of a penny per song.

"That's bad news for companies hoping to turn a profit. 'You can't do both, because companies couldn't compete fairly if they did,' Cuban wrote. 'Companies which were more labors of love and didn't try for revenues would have a huge advantage. No revenues, no expense to the RIAA.

"'On the other hand, a per-song cost of one-half penny per song is outrageous if you translate it to a CPM cost. Eighteen songs per hour, one-half (penny) per song equals 9 cents per hour, or a $90 CPM cost to the RIAA. Awful tough to make money that way and the RIAA knows it. How does a for-profit company with revenues compete with one without?'...

"Smaller webcasters like On-the-I.com...agreed to fork over nearly 30 percent of the company's revenue to the RIAA..."

Read the full article in Wired News here.

...

xxxxxxxxxxxxx The article above doesn't make it quite clear: Cuban is saying the RIAA is asking for a third- to a half-penny per song per listener that hears it. Thus, a half-penny per song times 18 songs per hour would be 9 cents per listener-hour. So if you have a thousand listeners to your webcast during the 10AM hour, you'd have to pay the RIAA $90 for that hour of webcasting. (That's where Cuban comes up with his $90 CPM figure. Yow!) xxxxx

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From Billboard: "Legislation introduced Monday by Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., is already being called the 'MP3.com bill.' The Music Owner's Listening Act of 2000 seeks to amend the Copyright Act to make the transmission of 'personal interactive performances' legal.

"The act would allow consumers to access music they streamed from the web at any time -- as long as they can prove ownership of the recording, and are not using the music for commercial purposes..."

"The measure has Republican co-sponsorship, but, insiders say the chance of passage in this Congress with only two weeks remaining in the session are slim. The bill can be re-introduced in January..."

The RIAA, the MPAA, the NMPA, the Songwriters Guild of America, ASCAP and BMI have already protested the bill in a joint letter to Congress.

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BY PAUL MALONEY
Vancouver, BC Alternative Rock station CKVX's ("104.9 Xfm") website (here) is a very handsome and reasonably functional extension of the outlet's "brand" on the Internet, and serves as a good reflection of the positioning and the style of the station.

It's certainly obvious that Xfm went to the expense of having the site professionally designed. Face it, in a world where "image is everything," a professional design job lends so much more "cred" to a station than paying your part-time promotion intern a couple bucks to exercise his limited HTML skills. While for larger-market stations this mistake isn't usually made, stations will a smaller expense account must realize that when you're talking about your image, you have to "do the right thing."

Xfm's color scheme is unified, there's some impressive Flash work done (there's an equally attractive non-Flash version of the site available), and the interface makes navigation simple.

The site isn't too deep on content -- but that's not necessarily a "minus." The important elements are all here, presented simply but effectively: The site's "Music" section has a "Request X" e-mail form for visitors to suggest songs. (Visitor interaction at the site is always a good thing.) The station posts its weekly list of top-rotating "current" songs as the "Top 22." And visitors can listen to 30-second MP3 clips of the week's "adds."

(Just wondering: Why not offer MP3 clips for all the songs on the chart? The station already created the MP3 when the selection was first added...and it takes most listeners much longer than one week to become familiar with current music, assuming that Xfm's purpose of posting song fragments is to increase familiarity.)

The "Music News" page is simply 2 or 3 items from the morning show feature "Music News You Give A Damn About."

The "What's Up" section of the site gives visitors pertinent contest info (very smartly presented, well-written and clear), a concert listing page, and the "catch-all" various events page, presumably for non-contest, non-concert activities -- like community events.

The concert listing is a little confusing in that there are different sections for Xfm Presents, Hot Concerts, and Down the Road. (We're sure there are different schools of thought here, but we'd suggest not trying to "position" certain concerts as the station's own event if you risk confusing your visitors. Why not just a solid list of all the concerts -- and make them all, in a sense, "station events"?)

Very commendable that the "On the Mic" section is not an over-extensive morass of DJ minutae -- but on the other hand it could be profitable to give fans of the station who might be interested in station personalities, especially the morning show, some reason to hang on the site. Even if it was just a dedicated morning show page with some cool "exclusives," like audio bits to download, a schedule of the show's guests, or morning show-specific promo information.

All in all, a very sleek and unified design -- and certainly not an overload of info. If Xfm continues to beef up the amount of content, while keeping the site as attractive and organized as it is, it will have a great Internet presence.



Positioning his services as a way to protect traditional radio from the encroachment of satellite and Internet radio, broadcast veteran John Sebastian has launched Sebastian Radio, a Phoenix-based radio consulting firm.

According to his website, "It is of paramount importance to make your radio station less vulnerable to all the new technological competition vying for the hearts, minds, ears, loyalty and dollars of the radio listeners of America... Sebastian Radio is your answer to warding off these new perils...."

Sebastian's career history includes such stations as KDWB/Minneapolis, WCOZ/Boston, KTWV/Los Angeles, and KSLX/Phoenix. He also ran a successful rock consultancy in the 1980s.

Sept. 29-Oct. 1	MOBE/Internet & Technology, Chicago
October 5-7	Billboard/Airplay Monitor Seminar, New York
October 9-12	QuickTime Live! Conference, Beverly Hills
October 10-12	Streaming Media Europe 2000, London
November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin
November 12-14	Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) "Broadcasting 2000: On-air / On-line," Calgary (NEW!)
Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA, featuring a brand-new national study on Internet radio usage presented by Eric Rhoads & Kurt Hanson