We'll be finishing up our recaps from the RAIN Las Vegas Summit next week. To read our previous recap in RAIN, click here. Don't forget, if you'd like to get a first-hand look at the Summit, you can watch streaming video of the speakers and panels at TV Worldwide. xx

From Guardian Limited (UK): "Sometimes the technology works perfectly; it's the law and economics that get in the way. UK-based radio listeners won't have noticed, but since April 1 many British-based radio stations have begun switching off their internet streams to listeners based outside the UK.

"The reason: collection societies warned they would begin policing such streams and requiring payments. [See previous RAIN coverage here.] As most British commercial radio stations derive relatively little revenue from streaming to listeners outside the UK, most have elected to discontinue that part of their service rather than pay for a licence to continue.

"So a flowering medium that crosses borders effortlessly is suddenly being stifled -- at least by its UK practitioners, though not by those beyond -- with potential ramifications for all concerned...

"Nick Piggott, the digital content manager at GCap Media, owner of Capital Radio and other stations[, said,] 'We don't do a lot of overseas streaming, and we didn't feel it was a great hardship if we switched it off, compared to the potential cost in licensing fees and legal paperwork terms... in strict cost terms, a stream that leaves the UK costs us money we can't recoup. If you compound that by having to pay further royalties, it's not an attractive model.'..


Nations can have vastly different license schemes
"When it comes to radio stations broadcasting continuously, the realities of administration mean that stations are granted blanket licences -- they pay an annual fee based on their revenues, whether that's from advertising (commercial radio) or the public licence fee (the BBC). In general, British radio stations pay between 8% and 12% of their overall revenues in licence fees.

"Virgin Radio, for example, which has 4.2 million listeners in the UK and 1.3 million online, pays a little more than 10% of its revenues. 'We paid over $2m [£1.1m] to rightsholders last year to allow us to play music,' says James Cridland, managing editor for Virgin Radio... it's considerably more than a similar sized station in the U.S. would be paying.' American [broadcast] stations typically pay only 3% to 4% of their revenues in licence fees [for terrestrial listeners]...

"'It's odd that we have to stop broadcasting outside the UK,' says Cridland, 'yet we can still have all of these non-UK stations broadcasting into the UK.' On the other hand, he quotes an industry magazine: if the PPL somehow managed to stop foreign stations from broadcasting into the UK we would become the only country other than China to prevent access to overseas media sources.

"Don't think that's impossible. Peter Leathem, director of legal and business affairs for PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited, which collects the fees and distributes the revenues to performers), says that 'we are currently in dialogue with a number of U.S. service providers.' The PPL is, he says, prepared to sue. It's not clear, however, what jurisdiction the PPL would have in doing so...

"Dramatically changed medium"
may require a global license
"Gavin Starks, managing director of the non-profit webcasting company exequo.org... believes that ultimately there will simply have to be a global licence.

"At the dawn of web radio, no one had a licence... after several years, a licensing system was hammered out that drew on the framework decided in the U.S. There, the demands of the songwriters' collection societies looked likely to drive webcasters out of business until, in November 2002, Congress stepped in and mandated more reasonable rates. Here, the PPL's rate for web-only broadcasters (that is, not traditional radio stations simulcasting their output) is .000503p [U.S. .000929960¢] per listener per track per stream. It sounds cheap, but Tom Lousada, founder of the Association of Streaming Media Companies (ASMeC), points out that a web-only station with 5,000 listeners would be paying approximately £1.7m [more than U.S. $3.14 million] in rights fees annually, an economic model that is clearly not sustainable...

"Part of the problem is that all of the definitions of what radio is are also based on physics. Internet radio is different: it may mean shuffling tracks, personalisation, downloading. It is a long, long way from our grandparents' radio. Today's new services are just the first experiments in what could become a dramatically changed medium."

Read this entire article from Guardian Unlimited online here.

...

... The numbers quoted in the the second-to-last paragraph of the Guardian article above make no sense. First, the phrase ".000503p per listener per track per stream" is gibberish, since the "listener" and the "stream" are the same thing. Second, if the unit of currency is really pence (1/100 of a British pound), it's an extremely inexpensive royalty that comes to nowhere near the total amount Lousada is quoting. Third, the "5,000 listeners" mentioned is not using the same definition of listener as Virgin Radio's "1.3 million" listeners from earlier in the article. The latter is probably monthly unique listeners; the former is undefined, but most likely intended to be AQH (i.e., the average number of simultaneous listeners). And finally, whatever the unit of measures are, the numbers don't seem to multiply out to be 1.7 of anything. This reminds me of the period a few years ago when journalists were writing about U.S. royalty rates. Virtually every article got the numbers wrong -- usually 100 times too high or 100 times too low, but hardly ever correct. (If I remember correctly, Time magazine famously got the numbers wrong in both directions in the same article!) -- KH ...

From the Washington Post: "CBS Corp. on Thursday launched a new broadband channel called 'innertube,' an ad-supported outlet that will include specially created Web series and some use of material that hasalready run on CBS.

"The site, available on the CBS.com home page, is streaming three shows a day at first, at least one of them new each day. Material already shown will be archived and available for free to computer users.

"'We want our content to be all the places our viewers are — and they are certainly on the Internet,' said Nancy Tellem, president of the CBS Paramount Network Television Group.

"CBS is selling advertisements on 'innertube,' and some of the series contain product placement, too.

"The network has been the most aggressive in exploring different outlets for its programming...

"CBS wants to experiment with as many options as possible to see which consumers gravitate toward, Tellem said."

Read the entire article at the Washington Post.

BY DANIEL MCSWAIN
The Streaming Media East 2006 conference later this month will give exhibitors, executives, and a variety of media professionals the chance to interface with an elite group of streaming experts and enthusiasts.

The conference, which will take place at the Hilton New York over May 23-24, will feature 35 different panels, in addition to a full schedule of conferences and exhibitions covering a wide variety of streaming and non-streaming topics.

Conference and panel topics include "The Future of Portable Wireless Content", "Key Trends in Online Audio & Video", "The Changing Face of Internet Radio", and "Online Music: May the Best Model Win." The latter panel will be moderated by RAIN's Kurt Hanson.

Visit the Streaming Media East 2006 website here to learn more and register.