is going to help CD sales how? These people are insane and so dead. Too bad they are going to kill one of the best parts of the internet. Or at least chase it off shore.

Living in a small town internet radio is a life saver... Oh well.

There are three things going on here. One is that the entire CRB settlement isn't aimed to help artists, it's aimed to accrue preemptive damages on music downloaded from web feeds--the RIAA is the most powerful lobbying force in this arena, and it has absolutely no coherent plan for how to gear itself towards digital media, preferring instead to cripple the emerging market and push consumers back towards CDs. (home taping is killing the music industry! File sharing is killing the music industry! Internet radio is killing to music industry! ad nauseam) Yet Soundexchange is a separate entity, and hopefully they are showing just the tiniest inkling that they really SHOULD be representing the best interests of musical artists they claim to represent--99% of whom benefit from a more, not less, diversified broadcasting environment.

Fact of the matter is, only the top tier of bands makes any substantial money off of music sales. Most bands and musicians survive via the fine art of the tour, and a successful tour requires exposure. Exposure comes, of course, from people hearing and liking your music. Internet radio is perhaps the greatest enabler of this.

The second thing going on is that, in fact, it's just as believable that Soundexchange has absolutely no intention of representing the small artists, but rather realizes that to carry through with the intended royalty plan would mean giving the bills before both the Senate and House overturning the CRB decision a substantial boost in support when three quarters of Internet radio goes dark on July 15th, leaving them stuck with the original settlement they had negotiated back in 2002.

The third thing going on is that, even if a reasonable settlement is reached, that 2002 decision actually was a crippling blow to Internet radio. The Small Webcaster Settlement Act laid the groundwork for SOMA FM, Pandora, and the assorted other elegant and groundbreaking commercial web broadcasters... and tore the medium out of the grasp of Jane Microphone. Anyone with RealAudio used to be able to create their own station; these stations were predominantly not-for-profit, and essentially vehicles for the webcasters to share their favorite music with as much of the world as would listen. As often as not, this was music with zero commercial viability: broken up bands in niche genres. But the financial and bureaucratic demands of the SWSA made operating such small stations completely impossible unless you do so professionally. It was a profound defeat for the democracization of the Internet.

The RIAA and its interests in D.C. have already stabbed net radio; threatened to stab it again; and now are claiming to be embracing it. I'm glad that Pandora will stay operative, but they are, after all, a multimillion dollar outfit. It's all a P.R. shell game to disguise the fact that really, the small players--us--don't matter much in this arena. And probably never will.

I wonder what it would take to inspire Americans to log a million calls in three months to their Congressperson over the carnage in Iraq. But threaten to take away people's internet radio, then the get pissed. Amazing.