College Radio Survival News 3-6-2009

CBI considers the developments concerning webcasting and the Performance Rights act to be critical to the survival of radio and web stations at educational institions.  There is a lot happening that you need to be aware of so that you can support the survival of your station.

1.  The performance rights act, as proposed by MusicFirst, would require all FCC licensed non-commercial radio stations to pay $1,000 per year for playing music sent to you by the labels who beg you to play their music.  Further, the performance rights act would require your station to submit to recordkeeping requirements that would likely require you to submit data concerning every single song you play, including the artist, the song title, the album name and the record label.  Congressmen Green and Conaway have introduced a bill to stop the performance rights act.  We encourage stations to support LOCAL RADIO FREEDOM ACT by visiting Free Radio Alliance.  Well over 100 representatives have already signed on to this bill, but more are needed.  Call your representative today and tell them that they need to sign on to the LOCAL RADIO FREEDOM ACT.

2.  The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which determines rates and recordkeeping requirements for webcasters has issued a proposed rule that would effectively kill all college webcasters using music (see https://www.askcbi.org/?page_id=207 ).  Your input to the rule creation process is essential.

3. Right now, Educational stations can webcast to a small audience of 218 concurrent listners on average before exceeding the minium fee.   A rate setting process is currently underway that could substantially raise the minimum fee and lower the average concurrent listeners before exceeding the maximum fee to a low of one half a listener!

It is essential to the survival of college and educational radio and webcasting that all stations start paying attention and start telling Congress and the CRB that we won’t sit quietly while our survival is at stake.   In order to be a part of the solution, you need to be informed. Join the CBI email list, RSS feed, Twitter or Facebook group and stay informed and stay active against corporate greed and regulators who don’t understand.