The recent ruling of the Librarian of Congress still contains the requirement that webcasters must pay performance royalties for each unique stream. Since it’s impossible for a webcaster to tell whether a real person is on the other end listening to the stream, the webcaster must pay the performance fee regardless for every stream, even if no one hears the performance.
This could put webcasters in the position of encouraging their listeners to shut off their streams anytime they aren’t actually listening. It’s almost as if streamed music were a scarce resource, like potable water in New Mexico. If webcasters don’t charge listeners per song for streams, “lazy” users could generate substantial wasted royalty payments for the webcaster. If webcasters do charge listeners per song, listeners have to worry about leaving the streaming client running everytime they walk out of hearing distance of their PC.
If the webcasters who own radio stations simply pass on the .02 cents per song charge for streams of on-air broadcasts, assuming 12 songs per hour, each hour would cost .24 cents. Leaving the tap open overnight for 9 hours brings the tab to 2.16 cents. For a pure webcaster with a .07 per song charge, assuming 15 songs per hour due to fewer commercials and mic breaks, the costs go to 1.05 cents per hour and 9.45 cents for the 9 hour overnight.
These charges won’t bankrupt people, but can you imagine every single webcaster out there dealing with the billing nightmares to pull this off? Anyone with billing software for the mobile telephone industry may want to start making changes to support webcasters.
Do per stream charges sound familiar? Try the record industry’s own, reportedly financially struggling, PressPlay.com (http://www.pressplay.com/terms.html):
“A “stream” means a Track that you may play back directly from and while you are logged to the Service. If you stream a Track for at least 30 seconds, one unit will be deducted from your available streams for that month. You may not attempt (or authorize, encourage or support others’ attempts) to capture, copy, or download a streamed Track. If you do not stream the maximum number of Tracks that your subscription package allows in any particular month, the remaining streams will NOT carry over to the following month (e.g. if your package includes 300 streams per month, but you do not stream all 300 during that month, you will still have only 300 streams the next month).”
The standard Pressplay subscription gets you 200 streams. Now that’s not 200 streams to listen to as much as you want. No, it’s 200 “streamed songs.” Although I haven’t tried the service, it sounds like you have to manually stream the songs. Sort of like listening to samples at Amazon, but you have to pay to hear the whole song. This is no where near as complex as the billing for streamed songs that are part of a webcast will likely be.
If you listen to webcasted music, get ready for significantly reduced selection, more ads, and more fees. Thanks, RIAA, for doing your part to bomb the web back to the Stone Age.