SoundExchange and Proton Radio

how will proton be affected by the new changes in fees? do you even pay fees?

Good question. It would be great to get a discussion going on the forums about this.

Most of the music we play is independent, and not registered with the publishing houses. Though I've recently been told that SoundExchange can potentially ask for fees for artists they don't even represent, and hold the money until the artists register with them. We think this is lame.

First and foremost Proton's goal is to promote the labels, artists, and DJs we play. As you can see on all the tracklists we post you can click to buy any song from Beatport that we play. If the song is released, the best place its going to be is on Beatport. The label then gets money for the sale, which is a lot more than they'd be getting from any royalty fee.

From here, as Proton grows, we want to explore new avenues to help labels generate revenue in a feasible business model that makes sense for both sides. We've been kicking around the idea of starting a publishing house for the labels, to help generate revenue and get permissions. If we don't do it, maybe Beatport or another company will first.

Please give us your feedback! I'd love to get a dialog going here. Thanks for posting, as you can imagine we've been thinking about this alot with the recent rulings out in DC.

well, i know ive used beatport before due to proton.

i say move to a country that has no such fees.

if all the indie webcasters did that, the industry in the US would bomb and the *AAs would take the hint.

quote:

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Originally posted by happydan:
well, i know ive used beatport before due to proton.

i say move to a country that has no such fees.

if all the indie webcasters did that, the industry in the US would bomb and the *AAs would take the hint.

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the new bill passed by congress has given RIAA/SoundExchange FULL rights to collect royalties even for non members, meaning that they are now the legal representatives for ALL Labels, even if they are not RIAA members or members of SoundExchange

this affects ALL internet broadcasters that have their streams available in the US, and the bill is retroactive meaning that are collecting past royalties as well...


the major issue with this is, they count each play as per person listening, DI (digitally imported) now owes the RIAA a couple MILLION dollars, and is about to be forced to shut down entirely

this DOES affect Proton (as well as Breaksfm) and every other internet broadcaster out there at the moment


the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.

right now, proton is just as liable as every other webcaster out there, regardless of whether the labels they play music from are members or not

the only way around it, at this point, is to have every single label that has music played on this and any other webstation actually negotiate contracts with the stations themselves...

these are very dark days for web radio

If, and only if this goes through, SoundExchange will be very busy trying to catch each and every station playing music provided by artists and labels not associated with RIAA, including getting involved in various law suits against such practice. As this amount is huge, they have to take certain high-profile web sites first in order to scare the others into their scheme. They can't touch entities outside USA so this whole thing is very futile, both short and long term.

Now, they don't mind, as they are really just a group of lawyers trying to justify their huge pay checks. This has IMHO nothing to do wtih artists' interests, and actually also very little to do with labels, too. It has all to do with the existence of RIAA and SoundExchange.

My prediction is that SoundExchange will be gone in two years' time, and the power of RIAA will get down to just a lot of noise and no power within five years or so.

--Kent
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