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BY DANIEL MCSWAIN
Webcasters across the country have begun an organized effort to mobilize listeners in the fight to keep their operations online.

Faced with last week's Copyright Royalty Board decision, which threatens to shutter the huge majority of Internet radio operations in the U.S., webcast audiences are rushing to respond, signing online petitions and calling the attention of their elected officials to the Webcasters' struggle.

There are already a number of destinations for Internet radio listeners to support Webcasters in their fight against this latest ruling. Below is a list of sites where Webcasters and audiences alike can discuss the ruling, contact members of Congress, and generally contribute to helping to keep Internet radio online:

• Save The Streams — A site published by the RAIN team designed to be a "central command" for Webcasters and audiences looking for continuously updated info and links.

• Save Our Internet Radio — Site published by a Radio Paradise fan with comments from listeners, editorials on the CRB ruling (including one by William Goldsmith), and links to other relevant sites and information.

• Congress.org — Varying forms of the standard petition  drafted by a group of Webcasters. Includes direct links for users to easily send their petitions to the elected officials in theirdistricts.
  

• "Please Keep Internet Radio Alive!" at iPetitions

Wired Listening Post writer Eliot Van Buskirk, who has been playing close attention to the CRB decision since last Friday, writes today: "Larger services that offer thousands of channels, such as the free Pandora, are also facing a huge spike in royalty costs. Kurt Hanson, publisher of RAIN and CEO of AccuRadio, went so far as to speculate that Pandora, which  is based in the United States, could 'disappear' as a result of the new rates. Overseas competitors like Last.fm, which is based in London and removed from the board's restrictions, could easily claim Pandora's market share."

"If Pandora has to pay the annual $500 minimum for each channel, Hanson said, its sound-recording royalty bill for 2006 alone would be capped at about $2 billion (based on the service's 300 million registered users, each of whom gets to create up to 100 unique channels)."

Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy chimed in, calling the rates "disastrous", and adding: "I'm not aware of any Internet radio service that believes they can sustain a business at the rates set by this decision. The only reason the services are not shutting down today is the belief that rationality will ultimately prevail here, either through appeal or Congressional intervention."

Kennedy goes on to warn of the competitive void that the demise of Internet radio would leave, and the gross disparity between formats that the decision creates. "If these rates are left standing, satellite and broadcast may be all that are left," Kennedy said. "Broadcasters pay no sound recording royalties at all and, at the new rates, Internet radio would have to pay 4-5 times the rate that the satellite companies pay."

In an e-mail to the GigaOm website, Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren added, "Left unchanged, it's over for us and every other internet radio service, period."

...

... I checked my notes last night from hearing a recent speech by Pandora founder Tim Westergren in Chicago, and the amount owed could potentially be even greater than I estimated in the article. Westergren says Pandora currently has 6 million registered users; let's guess that at the end of 2006 they had at least 5 million. If the average user sets up 1.5 "stations," that's a 2006 royalty obligation of $3.75 billion. —KH ...

Webcasters aiming to raise awareness via their audio streams can use a number of pre-made audio spots being made available online. Check out a directory of files made by WZFB here.

Coming soon, RadioIO plans to publish a "package" of audio spots regarding the royalty rates and what listeners can do to take action. All interested Webcasters will have access to the package. As soon as it becomes available, RAIN will provide information on how to access the audio files.

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