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April 24, 2009

Webcasting survey even for those not webcasting!

CBI is conducting a survey of college and high school stations in response to a proposal, by the Copyright Royalty Board,  to increase the burdens stations face when webcasting.  We are seeking input from all stations, even if they are not currently webcasting.  The survey is available at http://tinyurl.com/CBI-recordkeeeping-survey .
The proposal seeks to implement census reporting, which would mean keeping track of all songs played (for which a release has not been obtained from the copyright owner) including the song title, artist, album and record label.  The data gathered would need to be submitted monthly.

In addition, stations are currently allowed to report the size of their audience by using Aggregate Tuning Hours (ATH) covering the current reporting period of 8 weeks per year, but under the proposal, stations would no longer be able to use ATH, which is a measure of all listening.  Instead they would be required to count each and every connection to each and every song, regardless of thelength connection, even if it happens through automated ‘bots’.

We believe that these proposed changes will have a strong impact on the ability of stations like yours whether you are currently webcasting sound recordings think you may want to sometime in the future.

We know this is a busy time of year for you, so we have kept the survey as short as possible while still gathering the needed information.
Please take a few minutes to take the survey at http://tinyurl.com/CBI-recordkeeeping-survey

For more background information on this issue, see our previous posts.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask by calling 713-348-2935.