“…It’s the exact opposite of broadcast radio, where the vast majority of stations are owned by a few media giants, who restrict playlists to the lowest-common-denominator ears. In the Webcast world, however, it’s possible for Jim and Wanda Atkinson to run one of the more popular sites—and one day, they hope, a profitable ad-supported business—by playing the tunes of, say, Dashboard Confessional. Possible, that is, until Oct. 20.
“That’s the day the bill comes due for a government-imposed performance fee brought about by pressure from the recording industry. The fees, retroactive to 1998, “would put us out of business along with 90 percent of the industry,” says Jim Atkinson. It would be the day Web music dies—and a classic instance of an Old Economy industry leveraging its power to kill a promising alternative…”
Click here to read the full feature story from this week’s Newsweek Magazine.
