From the Washington Times: "More than 30 percent of U.S. Internet radio stations have stopped broadcasting in the past year, and some webcasters are moving operations overseas to avoid paying a royalty that takes effect next month for copyrighted music...

"'Shutting the station off just wasn't an option for me. I have a sizable audience and I want to keep it going,' said Vince Garcia, 42, a production director who started www.VinceGarcia.com, a Los Angeles Internet radio station that plays 1970s rock, two years ago. The royalty, paid to artists and record labels, would cost his station an estimated $10,000 a year, Mr. Garcia said. So he moved his servers to Europe. Song files are on the server and he operates the station with software from home...

"Cherry Shephard started www.WorldGospelOutreachRadio.com in July. Mrs. Shephard runs the gospel station from her home in Butzbach, Germany, where she is stationed in the US Army, but her servers were in Colorado. In August, she moved them to Sweden...

"The Recording Industry Association of America said webcasters will have to pay royalties on all music US consumers listen to. 'This will not affect webcasters' responsibilities to pay for transmissions to listeners in the US,' said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, the group set up by the RIAA to collect and distribute royalties paid by webcasters...

"Whether webcasters go out of business or out of the country, artists and record labels will lose a potentially massive source of revenue, said Mike Roe, who began Florida-based www.RadioIO.com in March 2000."

Read this entire article from Saturday's Washington Times here.




Sometimes cooperative, sometimes contentious, but always interesting. Like a sibling rivalry, the relationship between the music industry and audio technology can be a volatile one, in spite of their common ancestry -- for when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, he accidentally invented the music industry.

That's how NPR cultural correspondent Rick Karr sees it. Last Friday, National Public Radio aired the first of his six-part series called "TechnoPop: The Secret History of Technology and Pop Music."

Since the phonograph's invention, Karr explains, "technological innovations have repeatedly altered the sound of popular music, and regularly changed the way listeners acquire it, listen to it, and share it with others." The first part of his series is called "The Original Hardware Upgrade." It's the story of Gennett Records, a successful firm in southeastern Indiana that changed from piano manufacturing to record making.

This Friday, "Part Two: Going Electric" will delve into the changes wrought by electricity's arrival to the studio in 1926. Read more, and listen to the archived streams on NPR's site here.

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From MediaPost.com: "Ordinarily, Wanda Atkinson is in St. Louis running 3WK, the Internet radio station she owns with her husband, Jim. But yesterday she was in Washington, canvassing Capitol Hill in search of Congressional support for her cause -- protecting small Webcasters from the royalty fees instituted by the Librarian of Congress that are due to be paid a month from now...

"Weary from the day, Atkinson couldn't remember all the offices she visited, but said she met with aides of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-MO) and Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL) among others.

"'There's a lot of support for small Webcasters on the Hill,' she says, indicating they now understand the problem small Webcasters face from the fees...

"When asked whether the Congressmen she visited thought they'd be able to act on the [Internet Radio] Fairness Act before the Oct. 20 fee deadline, Atkinson says, 'They couldn't tell us about that.' The Congressional session is set to close in October and Congress is tied up with other important issues, so it may not be able to act in time...

"She says some of the Webcasters also met yesterday with the Small Business Administration in an effort to get small Webcasters officially defined as small businesses."

Read this entire article here.

From InternetNews.com: "A security site that is well-known in the hacker community on Friday exposed a critical error that opened the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Web site to attacks.

"The major security breach occurred after the RIAA's web administrators failed to secure a portion of the site to remote access, opening the door to anyone who wanted to deface the site or upload pirated music files.

"The breach in security ironically comes after the RIAA.org Web site was the victim of a major defacement a couple weeks ago.

"According to a spokesperson for the RIAA, network administrators are looking into the problem in order to close the breach. The vulnerability has now been password-protected...

"Officials were unaware of the vulnerability until contacted by InternetNews.com, although Zone-H.org has publicized the breach since last night."

Read this entire article here.