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Radio Webcasters Lose Court Battle - What Now for and Pandora?


A panel of copyright judges have ruled against Internet radio broadcasters in their appeal regarding the hiking cost of royalties to record labels.

Small and large Internet radio broadcasters alike, including Yahoo and NPR, have been active in trying to reverse the court order that is increasing the cost of streaming radio online. The record label side of the music industry feels they are not being properly compensated through Internet stations. While the panel of copyright judges has ruled in favor of record labels this time around, they have granted some leniency for Internet broadcasters, allowing them to calculate fees for average listening hours, as opposed to paying royalties every time a song is played. This will only be in effect for the remainder of the year, then the new pay-per-song format will take over.

The new law threatens to put many webcasters, such as, out of business, as they will no longer be able to pay the high fees of broadcasting via the Internet. While regular radio stations will not be seeing a rise in their royalties costs, they are viewed as promoting record sales. Unfortunately, the Internet broadcasts are not seen as doing such, at least not on a scale that is seen as beneficial to record labels, despite ongoing deals between webcasters and record labels such as EMI and Warner Music Group.


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