Last_fm, the popular custom radio and music network, will press on with expansion plans, despite the threat to internet radio from the record industry lobbyists in the US.
A battle is currently being fought Stateside over how much royalty should be paid for streaming radio. Until the tail end of last week, the future of online radio looked bleak in the US, when collection society SoundExchange, backed by the RIAA, defeated an appeal to the Copyright Control Board to overturn a tripling of the royalty.
The appeal was brought by a coalition of webcasters who said the new regime would destroy an embryonic and as-yet unprofitable business, but it fell on deaf ears.
Speaking to The Register, Last.fm founder Martin Stiksel said the RIAA had succeeded in masking the fact the huge payday their new royalty scheme would grant would not be passed on to artists. “They’ve managed to lead the discussion, when they shouldn’t have been allowed to,” he said.
On Friday, a bill was introduced in Congress aimed at guaranteeing internet radio parity on royalty payments with satellite broadcasts by capping the rate payable to collection societies at 7.5 per cent of revenue. SoundExchange and the RIAA have argued that the bigger potential audience for internet radio means it should pay more.
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