RIP, Net Radio


When I want to listen to music, most of the time I tune to Live 365 network radio. It provides an astounding array of stations playing anything from Japanese pop to Cool Jazz to modern Arabic music. I pay an annual fee which, considering how much I love the service, is a bargain. So why is it no surprise that Congress wants to help destroy this liberation of music back to the public? As always, it's the money.

I'm sure I could go in and research the "facts of the case," from the legal point of view, but let's face it, anybody who's not a moron knows that when big money needs help, Congress keeps an eye out for them. Sometimes it's the right eye and sometimes it's the left eye, depending on what they have to ignore. What they have to ignore now is that the Recording Industry Association of America has asked for, and received, their help in shutting down internet radio by imposing fees small non-profits can't afford. The only people who can stay in business are the fat cats, like Microsoft, who can use internet radio as a loss leader for their music stores.

The RIAA was created in 1952 to administer standards on vinyl recordings. The need for them, if there ever was one, didn't last that long. But in the manner of all organizations searching for a purpose, the RIAA became a toll collector.

There are of course artist's associations, and internet radio already pays them fees, but none of that money is going to Mr. Wallace. He's pissed. He paid Butch to go down in the fourth and placed his bet on a dead man walking.

Transcript from recent Committee Hearing with a small internet radio station provider:

"Is Mitch Bainwol a bitch?"

"What?"

RIAA is a toll booth. It collects, administers and distributes music industry money. That means RIAA can manipulate American music in any direction they want it to go, and they've been doing it for so long, it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with it. They are not necessary for the protection of artists, they are only trying to constrain how the internet is used in order to protect an outdated business model. Congress is for sale, as usual, to the deep pockets who want this to come to pass. In fact, any time a company which has plenty of lawyers and enforcers ends up having to buy protection in Congress, you can bet they trying to sell a dead parrot.

If we start from the current situation, instead of what existed when RIAA was formed to administer frequency curve standards on vinyl, there are some differences. Back then, the capital investment required for an individual to record and distribute a high quality copy of his, her or their performance piece, was millions of dollars. No artist had a chance of being distributed without being under contract because there was no simple and easy means of distribution.

All the power was on top. And that's where they want to keep it. They had the power over production and distribution, because the artist couldn't afford it.

Now, anybody with some enthusiasm can raise enough money to put together a studio for recording music, and a web site for distributing it electronically. The only difference between an independent and a contracted musician becomes promotional opportunity. Distribution is so simple that with zero musical knowledge I produced an album which is stocked on iTunes and several other places, and have posted songs on my site that have been downloaded with surprising regularity.

I didn't have a clue about how to become a songwriter other than by writing some songs and recording them. I found years ago that to learn something new, it is best to create a project which requires the new skill, instead of making the skill the end in itself. So when I realized I wanted to play a guitar and sing, I decided to produce an album. It accelerated the learning curve, which needs some help when you're past fifty and used to blessing your fellow man by just mouthing the words when trapped in a situation where people are singing together.

What I learned in the process was that two thousand dollars can buy recording gear that will produce a clean, professional quality signal, and pay a professional to master it for you. I'm including such things as a pre-amplifier, signal processor and compressor, and two high quality microphones. That is buying used gear of course -- the guitar was forty dollars at a yard sale -- but the point is, you can get your performance piece recorded and mastered and available for download cheaper than you can buy a used car, and get results you couldn't have had at any price when the RIAA was put into business.

In my case I paid a musician friend to produce it because I didn't know Dick.

Music comes up from neighborhoods, and is played in clubs, and is part of the culture. The fact that a few people could control the worldwide distribution of music because it was once hugely expensive is no reason they should be treated as if they own music itself. They have distribution rights, which is not the same thing as protection from new technology which renders their business model obsolete.

With the existing technology, a radio station becomes a creative project any teenager can do as an art form, like painting or photography. To allow the RIAA to charge them big fees basically makes it illegal by pretending it is a business. I certainly don't think of many of the stations I listen to as businesses. I think of them as playlists being put together by people who love music and want to program it. To impose limitations in order to artificially re-create an earlier time, is okay if you're making a museum, I guess, but it's a hell of a way to govern the distribution of something as integral to the society as music.

First they had a problem because people were downloading it. Now they have a problem because people are listening to it. They don't care if they listen to it on the radio, though, from a broadcast source. If it wasn't played on the radio who'd hear it? Who'd buy it? Remember when the news was about the industry paying disc jockeys to play what they wanted them to play? They can't do that with some kid's internet play list.

Recently I wrote a piece about corporations, and how they used a constitutional amendment to protect freed slaves to shove through a provision giving them, the corporations, the status of individuals under the law. This meant that a corporation couldn't be disbanded, which meant that instead of it's being there to serve the public, it need provide no useful service at all.

The risk and the expense belong to the past. The expense now is in live performance, and so is the risk. There's no risk in recording something or distributing it, because you don't lose money because something is not downloaded. You don't make money but you don't lose a significant amount, either. The perceived risk to the artist and studio is that a lot of people are listening to music they didn't pay for, and the assumption is that with the right to distribute music comes control over the development and use of technology which would interfere with the existing business model.

If Steve Jobs hadn't stepped in and showed them how to sell their music in a new model they'd probably be raving mad by now, stalking people around on the internet and threatening them. Oh ... I guess they are still doing that, aren't they? And threatening Apple because they aren't getting enough money on the deal. They must find these guys under rotting vegetation.

I remember when we used to have phonograph records and magnetic tape, and nobody thought about trying to stop you from taping your records. What did they care? I guess if you started putting them up for sale on the street you would have had trouble, but between acquaintances, there were always tapes being made of records. It would be easy for some record company to claim that if you had not taped the record you would have bought it yourself, but that was usually not true. People gave you records to tape and if you liked somebody then you'd probably buy some records by them. Taping music is arguably the best advertising the artist, , and so is internet radio. This is not about protecting artists. This is about protecting a business model which is falling apart.

Technology has made it possible for people to copy music easily and trade it around easily over the internet. It has also made it possible for these guys to harass people for downloading music they don't pay for. That was bad enough, because these people are their customers. Most of them are young, and it is in their music where they have their poets. But it's not enough to randomly attack people for copying music in an environment where copying anything is dirt simple, they follow that act with shutting down all the small internet radio stations by jacking up what they have to pay in fees to RIAA.

RIAA does not expect to collect these fees from the stations. They know they are shutting them down. Congress knows they are shutting them down. Maybe they foresee that the iPhone is going to be operating off high speed networks pretty soon and internet music will be available to anyone. Broadcast licenses are going to be toilet paper. It makes sense to me that they're making the internet conform to their model of limited distribution which maintains their contractual hold on the artists. "You want to be heard you sign with us."

It's not just a business, though. It's amplification of the poetry of youth.

I've got a teenager and I know how important this poetry is to them. All the other heros are gone, but in the singers, they hear the poetry of their generation that can be amplified and shared among them. That some investors got a revenue stream going in this process is fine, so long as it lasts for them, but do they think that this process of shared poetry among the young is a business first, and a generational bonding process second?

They have it backward. They deserve a backlash.

All they can do is some inappropriate harm to random victims. It's like shooting somebody at a labor rally outside the factory as a warning to the crowd.

"I warned them not to come any closer to the gates."

"But that was my mother."

"Don't take it personally."

What the game has degenerated into is a bunch of people whose business model will fall apart unless they can buy a hit job from Congress. So goodbye, internet radio. This has been the best thing that has ever happened to music in my lifetime. I had quit listening to music, and will not listen to commercial radio and will not watch commercial television. Internet radio turned me on to listening to music again, and I don't take this hit job on it lightly.

Bring up Mr. Eddy's Theme and fade to black.

Posted: Fri - July 13, 2007 at 03:54 PM