Internet Radio Saved...

...for two months, at least.

The Copyright Royalty Board has announced that the first royalty payments from radio webcasters isn't due until 15 July instead of 15 May. That gives Congress more time to pass the Internet Radio Equality Act (58k pdf file) , which would set Internet radio royalty fees at the same rate currently required for satellite radio. Sounds reasonable to me.

I still support the "Save Internet Radio" efforts, even though it looks like it won't do me any good personally. I received another email from Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, that said that due to licensing issues, since I'm accessing Pandora from outside the U.S., my access will be blocked. No more Pandora for me. :( I'm guessing other Internet radio sites will follow suit.

Technorati Tags: pandora, copyright royalty board, copyright, music, internet radio equality act, Westergren

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Only 19 Days Left to Save Internet Radio

If you enjoy listening to free music that is completely legal and supportive of the artists who created it, then please visit the SaveNetRadio.org website and find out what you can do to help

Technorati Tags: freestuff, music, SaveNetRadio

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Save Pandora.com! Save internet radio!

I got an email from the owner of Pandora.com the other day, and I thought I'd share. I've been a member at Pandora for a looong time and I really enjoy their site and their service, and I hope we can do something to keep it all going. If you're not familiar with Pandora.com, they "help you discover new music you'll love." You type in the name of a song or an artist that you like, and Pandora starts playing songs it thinks you'll like. You give each song a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, and it uses that info to refine its recommendations. It's great! And according to the email, it's in trouble:

Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,

I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio:
http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.

I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

So I'm passing this message on, and I hope that anybody who enjoys Pandora, or internet radio in general, will do whatever they can to help save it.

Technorati Tags: Pandora.com, music, radio, netradio, petition

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Free Music from Amazon.com

Free MP3s from Amazon.com? Sure! Amazon has new MP3s that you can download for free every day. You can listen to a 30 second sample to see if you like it, and if you do you can download the entire song for free. And of course if you want the whole CD, you can buy it. And if you're a regular use of Amazon's a9.com search engine, you get a 1.57% discount on any Amazon.com purchase.

To get a list of all free MP3s available at Amazon each day, subscribe to this RSS feed from Paul Cowan's funkwit.com site:

Amazon.com latest free downloads.

Not familiar with RSS feeds? Here's a great c|net article that explains what they are and how to use an RSS reader to read them:

How to...read RSS feeds

The Wikipedia has a good list of RSS feed readers -- they call them 'news aggregators':

List of News Aggregators

If you've never used an aggregator before, give it a try. It'll totally change the way you surf the web.