Register today for RAIN Summit! We've announced our first set of speakers for this year's annual RAIN Las Vegas Summit. New additions to the list include Jean-Marie Heimrath of Standard Interactive. Visit our Summit page for details (and a PayPal link to make your reservation) about the all-day event, to be held Monday, April 16 at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel.

From the Toronto Star: "Online radio is one of the Internet's quiet success stories. While podcasting and Internet video  garner the lion's share of attention, webcasting has emerged as a major force with millions tuning in daily to thousands of services that freely stream their signals online...

"Despite their popularity, there is growing fear that a recent U.S. royalty decision could effectively shut down thousands of webcasting services. The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board recently established a new royalty scheme that dramatically increases the fees that webcasters will be required to pay to stream music online...

"Given the concern about the future viability of Internet radio in the U.S., there has been mounting speculation that some webcasters may consider setting up shop in Canada, where the U.S. rates do not apply. For example, Mercora, a service that allows individuals to launch their own webcasts, has established a Canadian site that falls outside U.S. regulatory and royalty rules...

"The Canadian fee structure is still under development with webcasters likely to face several charges. Next week, the Copyright Board of Canada begins hearings on Tariff 22, a tariff proposed by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) to cover the performance of music online...

"SOCAN has asked the Copyright Board to grant a tariff that features a minimum monthly fee of $200 and establishes a royalty rate that runs as high as 16.7% of gross revenues (or gross operating expenses if those are higher) for on-demand streaming. The webcast rates vary from 3% to 9% of gross revenues, depending on the type of webcaster. Several groups are challenging the SOCAN tariff request and a final decision  from the Copyright Board is not expected for months.

"In addition to the Tariff 22 royalties, there are at least two other potential licences. The Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd. (CMRRA) licenses the music reproduction right. CMRRA... is now negotiating individual licences for Internet-only radio stations.

"The Audio-Visual Licensing Agency (AVLA), which licenses the duplication of master sound recordings, has also created a licence for webcasters that copy music on to Canadian servers for webcasting to Canadians. The agreement establishes transmission and subscriber fees as well as sets limits on the number of songs that can be webcast for any individual artists (no more than four in a three-hour period) and prescribes the quality of the transmission (no greater than 96 kilobytes per second).

"The net effect of these tariffs and licences is that webcasting in Canada can get expensive, particularly for non-commercial and niche webcasters.

"By wisely focusing on a percentage of revenue model rather than the U.S. per-stream approach, the Canadian framework may enable webcasters to get off the ground, yet a streamlined system for streaming will be needed before Canada develops into a genuine Internet radio haven."

Read this entire Toronto Star article here.

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... The problem with moving webcast operations offshore is that eventually there will be reciprocal agreements between various countries' rights organizations. In this scenario, webcasters would be required — at least theoretically — to pay royalties to various countries' rights organizations based on the location of the listener, not the webcaster. This still leaves at least two options for webcasters if the current royalty decision stands (and shuts down U.S. webcasting): A. Webcasters could move to a country whose record industry is not a participant in the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry). A wildly successful webcaster could still be blocked from U.S. listeners at the ISP level, but a smaller-sized one might not be. B. Webcasters could change their target audience to the country into which they move — for example, we could move AccuRadio to Vancouver and target Canadian listeners, or to Shanghai and target Chinese listeners, until 2010 (when hopefully sane royalty rates might kick in under the 2010-15 CRB determination, and we could move back to Chicago). We'll discuss this issue in more detail next Monday at the RAIN Las Vegas Summit. Be sure to join us if you can! --KH ...

From Engadget: "At this point, WiFi-equipped DAPs aren't completely novel, but they're still novel enough to command a good deal of attention..

"In fact, the $249 Sansa Connect bears a truly striking resemblance... [to the] Sirius' Stiletto.

"Though the Sansa Connect obiviously loses the Stiletto's satellite radio capabilites, it dominates the Stiletto (and the Zune, for that matter) in its effective use of 802.11 airwaves.

"Why most manufacturers have yet to pick up on the WiFi formula for this class of devices, we don't understand, but hey folks, it's easy: give us streaming, easy PC-free downloading, and firmware updates over the air.

"We're all awash in hotspots at this point, so let's take full advantage, yeah?

"The Connect is tied to Yahoo! Music Unlimited for its subscription download model ands treaming radio, and we've gotta say, a WiFi DAP really brings  the model into its own. It almost trivializes the need for serious storage in the device... because you can get literally any music in Yahoo's catalog whenever you have a data connection handy.

"All of Yahoo's features carry over, too: ratings can be saved from the Connect, album art is downloaded in real time, and you've even got Messenger on here. All of LAUNCHcast's stations are available to stream, and of course, you can build your own station based on personal tastes."

Read the entire article at Engadget.

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... There are two different paths to Internet radio portability: MP3 players can add Internet access and appropriate software (this story), or cell phones can add MP3-player functionality and appropriate software. The latter approach may be slower to roll out, but it will probably be the much more significant approach in the long run. --KH ...

two of the many unsuccessful brainchildren of the firm's skunk works

"Google's attempts to diversify — into radio advertising, online video and social networking — have flopped, leaving it dependent on its online ad business for nearly all its profits...

"Consider radio. Google purchased d'Marc last year for more than $100 million. It planned to use the firm's technology to automate the purchase of radio ads nationwide. But the effort was a disaster. D'Marc's founders fled the company. Radio industry titans feared Google's technology could usurp their relationships with major advertisers and reduce the profitability of radio ads. So Google has been relegated to selling bad time slots in small markets.

"Or look at GoogleVideo, a service launched with limited content two years ago... After it floundered, Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube — which, despite being the main Internet video destination, lacked revenue. It also came with substantial legal liabilities in the form of copyright-infringement lawsuits...

"With the online ad market growing at more than 30% a year, and Google dominating the space, it may be able to pour money into these ventures ad infinitum. But unless some of them — such as its new effort to automate TV ad sales  on DishNetwork's 125 satellite channels — begin to pay off, the search giant's shareholders may re-evaluate the massive multiple they award the company."

Read the entire article at the Wall Street Journal.