Did apathy kill the Internet Radio Star?

[Adam L. Beberg]

On Fri, 21 Jun 2002, Eirikur Hallgrimsson wrote:

> Maybe if streaming gets totally nuked save for the big 'uns like Spinner,
> we can fall back to playlist sharing ala Dave Winer's early work with
> Radio Userland.

*ding ding ding*

Playlists + Pirate2Pirate = much more efficient for nitch markets, but
again, because you're bypassing the royalties, you're going to be hunted
down eventually if you centralize anything. So support your local non-RIAA
artists by going to a concert instead. A better outcome is we all stop
listening to crap music the RIAA puts out. As the RIAA gets more agressive,
this should become the norm.

> I'd be interested to know if it's actually more expensive to serve a
> listener via internet.  It certainly seems like it because the marginal
> cost of another listener to an open air broadcast is vanishingly small.

FAR more expensive. Now that they have to pay the same royalties as a normal
radio station, adding to the losses they already have, they are all closing
down.

Look at it this way, if they WERE making money, the RIAA would have just
taken 3% of revenue like they do with real radio stations. When you dont
have anything to take 3% of, you have to set a flat fee, so they did.

I'm just mad they lowered it to only 0.07c, the faster the RIAA gets mean,
the faster the local artists can prosper.


- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
  http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/
  beberg@mithral.com