Dear Mr. Bengloff,

I have noted that your organization has spoken vigorously in favor of the Internet radio royalty rates set by the CRB and due to go into effect on July 15, 2007.

A few things puzzle me about A2IM's position, and I am hoping that you can clarify them for me.

Music from independent artists and labels make up 30% of what we get to hear on Internet radio. This is substantially more than we hear on terrestrial radio...

Live365 has stated that without permanent relief from the CRB decision, they will go off the air on July 15 because the only option is bankruptcy. There are thousands of other stations that face the same choices...

Who is going to pay your members their performance royalties if these stations that play their music now are are gone?

How are you going to make up for those stations going silent?

How are your artists going to replace the promotional value of getting heard on Internet radio?

If anyone should understand the value of a vigorous, varied and thriving Internet broadcast environment, it ought to be A2IM. The more webcasters there are, each paying a reasonable royalty, the better the chance the independent artist is going to get paid, because there will be stations that play those artists, and promote their live appearances, and sell their CDs. Yet publicly, you're supporting a rate schedule that is going to eliminate the very stations that play your artists, promote their gigs and sell their CDs.

And, to be completely frank, the settlement "offers" that SoundExchange has made... postpone the problem while imposing limits on both revenue and listeners that will spell immediate death for any webcaster popular enough to grow beyond those limits. God help the webcaster who plays one of your artists who begins to actually attract a following...

Do you think your label members would agree to a rule that if they sold "X" number of CDs in a year they would be forced to pay retroactive membership fees to the RIAA?..

I have read with interest your wholehearted embrace of the RIAA's campaign to get terrestrial radio to pay performance royalties... However, I've read on your own website that you realize that A2IM is going to have to provide the "poster children" for this campaign because no one can truly be sympathetic to a major label artist asking for more money. Yet, independent artists and labels will share in less than 10% of those royalties given the current terrestrial playlist bias in favor of the major labels...

Why is your organization lending its name and numbers to a campaign that gives your constituency so little and gives the RIAA so much?

In regard to these three issues... you are following the RIAA lead without much "independent" thought entering into it. To an interested outsider, it certainly looks like you aren't very independent when it comes to supporting things the RIAA wants...

I look forward to your response.

Fred Wilhelms [pictured at right]