Posted on 06/24/2002 7:06:20 PM PDT by Vidalia
Webcasting of Hawaiian music likely to end, thanks to new fees By HARRY EAGAR
Staff Writer
KAHULUI — Webcasting of Hawaiian music from Maui is about to end, victim of both a decision on royalty payments announced on Thursday and the fact that advertisers are not yet ready to support it.
That hits both commercial
webcasters, like Pacific Radio Group, and non-commercial enthusiasts like L.D. Reynolds of Hawaiian Jamz.
Pacific Radio Group’s KPOA Hawaiian station has been webcasting, but President Chuck Bergson says it will suspend the online programming in July. Part of the reason is a royalty decision by the Librarian of Congress, but part is KPOA’s lack of “ability to make money” via the Internet.
“I think that it will come,” says Bergson, “but it’s still a little too early.”
Reynolds calls the royalty decision “a disaster.” He will have to suspend on Sept. 2. Librarian of Congress James Billington established Sept. 1 as the effective date for the royalty rates to be set.
“There is no possible way,” Reynolds says, that he could cover the new fees. “I make a couple of hundred dollars a month” from some local sponsors.
The question of how to compensate artists and publishers of music whose performances are provided over the Internet has been controversial from the start — which for webcasting was in 1996. Losers in the contest get to enter bankruptcy court, like Napster.
Reynolds, longtime disc jockey at KMVI and KONI, was among the first to start sending out tunes via the Internet, from his bedroom in Kihei.
At first, there was a recorded program, changed twice a month, and archived, so fans could go back and pull up their favorites.
More recently, Reynolds has been able to provide streaming programming around the clock.
Congress passed the issue of fair compensation to a Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel in 1998. The panel in February proposed a fee schedule sought by the Recording Industry Association of America and its allies that would have provided relatively high royalties.
Billington on Thursday rejected the panel and said a fee schedule half as big would be fair. The schedule is complicated, but it works out to seven-hundredths of a penny per listener, which is what broadcasters pay.
While smaller than what the recording industry wanted, webcasters, organized as Save Internet Radio, complained that the take would be double their entire revenue.
They claimed that only big players would be able to stand the fees, freezing out the small players. Supposedly, the small webcasters were going to save big radio from its boring, corporate sameness.
Instead, according to Save Internet Radio, webcasting regulations are going to squeeze independent program providers to death.
Reynolds said Friday that he and other webcasters were studying Billington’s report carefully but that the decision had everyone “tied up in knots.”
At Radio and Internet Newsletter, Kurt Hanson, who has been beating the drums for small webcasting fees and small webcasters, noted Friday that the RIAA seemed almost as unhappy with the librarian’s decision as the
webcasters.
Some critics predicted RIAA would sue to get even higher royalties. Webcasters are hoping Congress will intervene on their side.
Reynolds says the mechanics of the royalty scheme are impossible for him, even without the costs.
“They want access records,” which he has no way of providing.
He knows how many hits his site (www.hawaiian-jamz.com) gets, but not who stays to listen to music or for how long.
He was counting “hits” in the hundreds of thousands as of April.
Hawaiian Jamz is not Reynolds’ bread-and-butter. “I can pull the plug and walk away,” he says.
But where does that leave “the 250,000 expatriate Hawaiians who are out there in Las Vegas or Seattle trying to maintain as much of their culture as they can by plugging in? They are going to lose out,” he said.
The way things are going, “it doesn’t look good.”
On the Net:
• Save Internet Radio: http://www.saveinternetradio.org
• Radio and Internet Newsletter: http://www.kurthanson.com.
• Library of Congress: http://www.copyright.gov/carp/-webcasting_rates_final.html
These folks aren't asses like Metallica's hard core whiners. They would simply like others to enjoy a bit of Hawaiiana. Is that so much to ask?
Insert the Eddie Murphy line where he's sitting in the jacuzzi from the movie Trading Places here.
That's smart, just cut off a potential source of income completely. I mean, people aren't going to buy the stuff off the shelves, especially if they've never heard of it. But if it's on the web, they might run across it by accident.
If this is the riaa's music, then its their blasted decision on what to charge, no matter how stupid or self-defeating it is. But is this hawaiian music you guys are mentioning under riaa jurisdiction?
Im interested in the hard distinction here, between what they can nail you for and what they can't. Because if I can get nailed for webcasting my buddy's music that the RIAA hasnt gotten its grubby paws within a thousands miles of, then it would be my privilege and honor to be nailed.
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