Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Live365 Continues Negotiations With SoundExchange

Found in my inbox this morning. I subscribe to their updates but of course HotMail classified this as spam.

A Word About The
Webcasting Royalty Rates

Live365 joins the Internet radio industry in SoundExchange negotiations
As you may recall, one year ago at this time, the Copyright Royalty Board announced catastrophically high new royalty rates that threaten to kill Internet radio. To fight these unfair royalties, Live365 helped co-found the SaveNetRadio coalition and led the campaigns for raising awareness in media and on Capitol Hill.

For the past few months, Live365 joined other webcasters at the negotiation table with SoundExchange to find a royalty rate that would fairly reward artists and allow us to grow the business. SoundExchange tried fishing for the highest rate - as much as nearly half of our revenue - but we just aren't biting.

While Live365 may look like one big fish to SoundExchange, in reality we are just a large school of little fish. We're made up of individual music lovers and independent broadcast enthusiasts like you and me.

Policymakers on Capitol Hill and our friends in the industry - artists and independent labels - have recognized that small, independent Internet radio stations play a vital role in the music industry by offering musicians, particularly indie artists, promotional benefits and royalty payments they can't get from AM/FM radio.

Live365 is committed to the principles of Freedom of Expression, Fair Use, and Fair Compensation to artists. We'll keep you apprised of developments of our continued talks with SoundExchange.

We've also heard your ideas for making Live365 an even better feature-rich site for webcasters and listeners alike. So stay tuned for a completely redesigned new Web site in the near future.

Thanks for your continued support.

Best regards,
Monty Ma and the Live365 Team

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