No More Urban Stations on Itunes!!??! WTF!?

[HIPHOPWEST.COM]

Is it just us or did they just yank all the urban stations
from the itune radio lists!!!
www.hiphopwest.com

Did anyone read this??:
RIAA going after Internet Radio Stations Now.
Saturday - Mar 10, 2007

RIAA Moves to Squash Internet Radio By Charging High Rates
Music fans who have sought out the Internet for solace over the mundane offerings of commercial radio may be in for some bad news. After a year of intense lobbying the RIAA has gotten just about everything they wanted from the Congress and the Office of Copyright in terms of royalty rates for Internet radio and other digital media services. Things are at such a high rate that it will effectively shut down most Internet radio broadcasters.
I saw this first hand a few years back while working at one of the biggest Internet radio companies. One of the services they offered was for free and because of the the then current rate structure that the RIAA lobbied for, as the more and more people began to tune in and the service got hot, the company was hit with this crazy bill that was in the millions. The company big wigs attempted to try and work things out with the RIAA based labels but to no avail. The end result was putting time limits on the service and then eventually closing it out altogether. It was just too expensive.
If such things can happen to the big giants that have millions in their coffers, then you can see that the little guy will be toast. Keep in mind at the time, the large number of listeners we had may have been around a million, which ain't all that large when you consider that you can reach the entire world.
As far as I'm concerned this was a move to eliminate competition and centralize the places that people go on line to get their music. In this case it's from the commercial radio stations who are now experimenting and expanding formats with their HD radio systems. As I noted during last year's LA FCC hearings, what i likely to happen is that commercial radio will do some behind the scenes bartering and not pay such high rates in exchange for air play on their regular outlets.
This is a very foul move and sadly it happened on the watch of the Democrats. Where's Hillary, Barack and others on this issue? or did that all that David Geffen (Geffen Records) money along with contributions from other Hollywood entertainment big wigs buy their silence?
What's even sadder is this happens just as activists and concerned community groups have been setting up their own stations to bring attention to key social issues overlooked by mainstream outlets. to top all this off, the new rates are going to be applied retroactively.
Now we can thank Congressional Black Caucus member Bobby Rush for selling out to big time commercial interests like AT&T and trying to get rid of Net Neutrality protections. We can now thank his fellow Democrats for allowing this bullshit rate hike to pass through without a whimper. Didn't they say they were gonna bring about a new day? Hasn't Barack been calling for a new type of politic? How can you have new type of politic that involves the people when you have folks in the same political camp making it real expensive to have a voice in the digital age?
What's crazy is as the Presidential election heats up and these "Demo-craps" find themselves getting clobbered to death by right wing talk shows, maybe then they'll think back and realize that they helped in killing a medium that could've been flipped to be key asset for them by grassroots independent organizers.
I will find out what can be done to turn this around, in the meantime, I suggest people start calling their congressional representives and demanding some answers. Oh yeah, don't let them tell you some nonsense about digital downloading being the cause of their economic slump. Hardcore Democrat and talk show host, Rosie O'Donell was on The View last friday spewing that lie.
Some of these bigtime artists have seen their album sales drop in half by mllions. I.e 50 cent saw album sales slip from 8 million albums to 4 million albums. There's no way 4 million people downloaded the Massacre album. Platinum selling artists like P-Diddy and Busta Rhymes who barely went gold with their last releases were NOT victim to MILLIONS of people downloading their albums.
Again folks the name of the game for those in power is to CONTROL THE FLOW OF INFORMATION AND WHO ACCESS TO MEDIA OUTLETS .. The RIAA is enacting what I call the New Net neutrality.
Davey D
RIAA Moves to Squash Internet Radio
courtesy of Radio Paradise and www.Kurthanson.com
The US Copyright Office has released their new set of rates for the payment of royalties by Internet Radio, and they ignored all of the facts presented by webcasters (including RP) and gave the record industry exactly what they asked for: royalty rates so high that they will put RP and every other independent webcaster out of business. See Kurt Hanson's newsletter for 3/2/07 for the details on how the rates work and what they will mean to stations like RP. You can participate in the discussion about this issue in our Listener Forum.
For some time, we've suffered with a system where we pay a large chunk (10%-12%) of our income to the Big 5 record companies - while FM stations and radio conglomerates like Clear Channel pay nothing. Now they want even more. In our case, an amount equal to 125% of our income. Our only hope is to create as much public awareness and outrage about this staggeringly unfair situation as possible. Neither the record industry nor Congress are ready to listen to us at this point. But members of the media may well be, and we need to get their attention.
If you have a blog, write about it. Feel free to quote anything I've written in the Listener Forum. If you find a good blog post about the subject, Digg it or Slashdot it. If you work for a media outlet, look over the facts of the situation and see if you don't feel the same sense of outrage that we do. Write a letter to the editor of your favorite magazine or newspaper. Let everyone you can know what a loss it would be to you personally if your favorite Internet radio stations, including RP, were no longer available.
The RIAA can, at any time, agree to strike a deal with independent webcasters to allow us to pay a more realistic royalty, one based on a percentage of our income. We're hoping that if all of you make enough noise they'll be more inclined to do so. We'd also like to hope that at least one member of Congress will take a look at this situation and become willing to propose ammendments to the deeply flawed 1990s pieces of legislation that are responsible for the unfair treatment of Internet radio.
Here's a more detailed breakdown of this...
BY DANIEL MCSWAIN
http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/ne...07/index.shtml
The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange(a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).
RAIN has learned the rates that the Board has decided on, effective retroactively through the beginning of 2006. They are as follows:
2006 $.0008 per performance
2007 $.0011 per performance
2008 $.0014 per performance
2009 $.0018 per performance
2010 $.0019 per performance
A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays.
The minimum fee is $500 per channel per year. There is no clear definition of what a 'channel' is for services that make up individualized playlists for listeners.
For noncommercial webcasters, the fee will be $500 per channel, for up to 159,140 ATH (aggregate tuning hours) per month. They would pay the commercial rate for all transmissions above that number.
Participants are granted a 15 day period wherein they have the opportunity to ask the CRB for a re-hearing.
Within 60 days of the final determination, the decision is supposed to be published in the Federal Register, along with any technical corrections that the Board may wish to make.
Within 30 days of publication in the Federal Register, it can be appealed (but only by the participants) to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.
...
Because a typical Internet radio station plays about 16 songs an hour, that's a royalty obligation in 2006 of about 1.28 cents per listener-hour.
In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour.
Even adding in ancillary revenues from occasional video gateway ads, banner ads on the website, and so forth, total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.
That math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues

[Al Bundy]

pirate radio stations will start coming out like they have in the UK.

[HIPHOPWEST.COM]

well of course but the problem is pirate radio stations can't last, they always get shut down, therefore you
won't ever have a solid station you can grow with and bump. This is bad for our music, for the independent, and for rap....

[Al Bundy]

you're right.

[HIPHOPWEST.COM]

we will have podcasts available soon for cali untouchable radio so hopefully that will help

[djbeto]

there going overboard 

[HIPHOPWEST.COM]

just gotta wait and see....now all those free downloads don't look so good anymore huh...
you know they wouldn't be tripping if they were making more money.

[soopadoopaflykid]

fuckin greedy bastards theey are

[HIPHOPWEST.COM]

yeah if all that is true that is too much to pay for some internet casts where they get promotion for
playing their artists music. but who knows.

What internet stations do you all listen to?

[soopadoopaflykid]

^^ well I mainly listen and dj for Warrior FM

[Realbiggsteele]

You cant say that you didnt see this coming. With the rampant bootlegging going on, the industry has to explore every avenue possible to make a profit. So if you have downloaded a album you are partially at fault for this happening.

[Shawn Nutt]

i think canadians are to blame, lmao... cuz 1) we dont get all the independant shit u guys get... never have i seen any underground or indy shit here... and 2) downloading is "legal" in canada, whereas for a while in the US they were cracking down on P2P downloads (limewire, bearshare, kazaa, etc) for being illegal... we gotta resort to downloading to get our music here, even though im only 20 mins from the fuckin border i guess 20 mins makes a big difference when it comes to importing/exporting

[HIPHOPWEST.COM]

order it from www.hiphopwest.com ! We ship to canada ..... ?

[Low Key]

I hope everyone in the RIAA dies a horrible death. They make so many peoples' lives a living hell all so they can line their own pockets with cash that is supposed to go to the artist, then they charge the artists even more royalties for itunes and ringtone downloads. Fuckin' nazis I tell ya.

[Convinced]

the RIAA means well, but they really need to get with the times.