Poet Kenneth Goldsmith created UbuWeb in 1996 as an online repository for obscure avant-garde art that, by virtue of having little commercial potential, was hard to find. Audio was an early component of the archive, owing to Kenneth’s interest in sound poetry, an even more obscure art form. Since then he’s served as the chief, […]
Internet radio experienced a sea change in the middle of the last decade that washed away many independent broadcasters, and changed the atmosphere for others. While the medium continues to sail on, it is also more fractured – and more diverse – than ten years ago. That’s why this evolution is one of the decade’s […]
What if I told you there’s an online archive of hundreds of avant-garde media works that exists with little regard for copyright, though it respects the wishes of artists and their estates? Would you believe it’s been there for 22 years, without fail? That archive is UbuWeb. I’m pretty sure I first learned about it […]
In the U.S. the copyright situation for music and sound recordings made before 1972 is a mess of different and conflicting state laws. That’s because there is no overarching federal law. The unintended consequence is that archivists, librarians and artists are often afraid to duplicate, distribute or repurpose very old recordings that – if they […]
“Will performance royalties create a new class of radio pirate?” That was the question I posed in early 2016 after the music royalty rates for small internet radio webcasters skyrocketed with the expiration of the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009. In essence I wondered if some webcasters would just choose to keep on broadcasting online […]
Another major threat to small and medium sized internet radio stations has surfaced. As Torrent Freak first reported Tuesday, on February 26 four major recording labels filed suit in federal court against internet radio platform Radionomy, charging that the company engaged in copyright infringement. The plaintiffs–Arista Records, LaFace Records, Sony Music and Zomba Records–allege that […]
Thousands of internet radio stations have gone silent in 2016, while thousands more may yet shut down, primarily because of new performance royalty fees that have skyrocketed for small and mid-sized internet radio stations. In this piece I explore how this challenge might encourage some webcasters to give up complying with the law and simply […]
Internet radio expert Kurt Hanson declared January 31 to be Sunday Bloody Sunday for the medium. Most significantly, that was the day that Live365 turned off 5000-some internet radio streams it hosted for broadcasters large and small. The shutdown comes after several other internet stations announced their closure, and countless more quietly went away. The […]
Live365 is one of the oldest streaming radio service providers, having provided online broadcast tools to countless webcasters, small and large, since July 1999. Early on the service made it comparatively easy for just about anyone to start her own internet radio station, and remained a popular option. It’s sad to learn, then, that Live365 […]
Last week, the D.C. Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals affirmed (see the full decision here) the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB)’s decision regarding the establishment of webcasting royalty rates, rejecting an appeal by college radio organization, the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS). These webcasting royalties are paid to musical performers who appear on the […]
