Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

Thanks,

Jennifer Thomas

Podcasting is probably the solution your client wants to look into. Here are a few resources:

http://www.podcast.net/

http://www.podcastingnews.com/

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/

http://podcasts.yahoo.com/

http://www.podcastalley.com/

Michael Martinez, Author

Michael Martinez gave some podcasting links in reply to Jennifer Thomas' question about Internet radio. While that may answer her question, it raises another in my mind.

What about someone wanting to become an online DJ, and legally broadcast music over the Web? I think Live365 and some other Net radio services will take care of tracking music plays and ensuring the appropriate payments go to ASCAP, etc. I haven't checked into this, though.

Has anyone had experience with this type of Net radio? Are there any good options for someone who'd like to share their music passion with Net listeners, yet not have to deal personally with the residual payments? What about making some money from listeners' buying MP3s or CDs via affiliate marketing, right off the Net-radio station?

Don Baker

NSI Partners

As someone who is involved with a radio station that broadcasts over the web and satellite, I can tell you that the copyright collection agencies do a VERY poor job. You must understand that these agencies are limited in their activities by national boundaries, which don't apply on the web. Doubtless they'll point to the 'origin' of the service as a way to ask for money, but in my experience the other half of the 'deal' (paying OUT the money) often seems not to happen...

I speak from experience here as a publisher member of several of these agencies and as a record label, too. Add to this the fact that broadcasters outside the US also have to pay for the use of the recording as well as the song. These are two separate copyrights. This point is usually misunderstood by those in the USA.

Broadcasters are legally required to be licensed and submit data to the relevant copyright agency. This will be some kind of accepted format and will require song title, writer, publisher, artist, label, ISRC code, etc. This is the broadcaster's responsibility. NOBODY is sitting and listening to your internet station with a pen and paper writing down copyright data as the records are played (even if they knew what it was!).

In defence of the copyright organisations, it's often more costly to process this information than it's worth. Then there's the dreaded 'sampling', whereby they only use data for once a month and multiply by 30... In the brave new world of digital music, the ISRC code should have been the link for all of this, and data could have been supplied electronically and automatically processed at minimal costs, ensuring correct payments.

Please remember this when adding ID3 tags to MP3 files intended for broadcast (or any other use). Most of the software I've seen for adding / editing ID3 tags shows scant knowledge of how copyright works (even Microsoft's!). Am I suprised? No. of course not... Sadly, the collection agencies haven't been able to agree a format for this use of ISRC codes, but I live in hope. We use them as a method for correct reporting of our MP3 download sales in electronic format.

For obvious reasons, I can't elaborate. Maybe I've said too much already....

Real gone,

Roy Williams

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Written by Donald Nelson
January 12, 2006

Don Baker asked about Internet radio and about the problem of having to pay royalties for the use of songs that are broadcast. I have been broadcasting using Live365.com for several years and they handle the payments to the music publishing companies.

When I started with Live365 it was free. When laws were passed, bringing Internet radio within the scope of the royalty system, then Live365 began to charge me (I now pay around $12 a month to broadcast with them.)  The fees for the recording industry are deducted from my monthly subscription.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,

a1-optimization.com

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Written by Michael Martinez
January 12, 2006

Radio SonicNet used to let you design your own Internet radio stations, but apparently RIAA or some other organizing body pressured the Internet radio services into stopping those activities.  If I recall correctly, the FCC (or maybe Congress) raised the online royalties per song, which originally were a fraction of what broadcast stations had to pay.

You would pick playlists by artist, not by song, and you had to have a pretty broad selection.  I wanted to create artist-specific radio stations but the service wouldn't allow it.  I finally persuaded a tech at SonicNet to explain why.  The FCC required them to force users to put at least 50 artists together so that the music selections could be randomized.

The service was good for the 1-2 years that I was able to use it.  I had a Xenite NetRock, Xenite NetCountry, and Xenite NetJazz station.  They played music 24 hours a day.  We even had a few people subscribe to the services and they cost us nothing.  SonicNet ran a few ads in the audio feed but they were selling CDs through the graphical interface.

Well, that's all gone now.

I think Napster, iTunes, and similar services will let you create playlists you can share, but I don't recall seeing anything about co-branding.  To be honest, these services are so popular I doubt I would be able to build a market share.

That said, if you have a bandwidth-friendly ISP, you can use software like Pirate Radio to broadcast from your PC.  There is an article at About.com which talks about how to do this.  I don't know how old or outdated it may be.

Michael Martinez

michael-martinez.com