Quote:That's pretty awful. I remember reading something about the pandora's and spotify's and how they were screwing over the artists like that.

Quote:<p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'freight-sans-pro';font-size:19px;">The war over online royalty rates is grounded in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed in 1998. It essentially states that when a song gets played over the Web, both labels and artists should get paid. This creates an additional expense for Net stations, since they, like conventional radio stations, were already paying a royalty rate to publishing organizations like ASCAP and BMI. Terrestrial stations do not pay anything directly to labels and artists.

<p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'freight-sans-pro';font-size:19px;">One of the few things online broadcasters and their adversaries, the labels and artists, agree on is that they don’t agree with the CARP’s proposed rate. While the broadcasters view the rate as too high, the labels and artists think it’s too low.

<p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'freight-sans-pro';font-size:19px;">An alternate petition is being offered by SoundExchange, an organization composed of industry executives and artists that counts among its boardmembers Aimee Mann, Recording Industry Association of America President Hilary Rosen and former Recording Academy President Michael Greene. SoundExchange’s form letter to Congress reads in part:

<p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'freight-sans-pro';font-size:19px;">“Congress should not interfere with the results of the CARP process, which Congress established to set the royalty rate. … I ask you to oppose any attempts by the webcasters and broadcasters to persuade Congress to interfere with that arbitration — and in particular to Arbitron’s request for a congressionally imposed moratorium on the new royalty.”

<p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'freight-sans-pro';font-size:19px;">The letter also claims several points raised by webcasters are exaggerations. One of its main points is that webcasters and broadcasters pay for all their other operating costs, such as bandwidth, marketing, personnel and software, so why should their content be viewed any differently. It also blasts webcasters for overstating the royalties they would be required to pay by basing projections on audience sizes they don’t actually have.

<p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'freight-sans-pro';font-size:19px;">The U.S. Copyright Office, which appoints members to CARP, is expected to vote on the proposed rate by May 21.