First off, go read this article, which has a parenthetical subtitle - “It ain’t good news” - that’s likely to win the award for Biggest Understatement of 2007.

If you’re too lazy to click on the link…well, first off, that’s embarrassingly lazy. But since I’m nothing if not an enabler, I’ll summarize for you, anyway: the Copyright Royalty Board has made its decree on the royalty rates that are to be paid by internet radio stations.

Per Orbitcast.com, the ruling is on a “per play” basis - so Internet radio stations will have to pay the cost of one song to one listener - effective retroactively for 2006, plus an additional fee of $500 per channel per year.

The rates to be paid are:

2006 - $.0008 per performance
2007 - $.0011 per performance
2008 - $.0014 per performance
2009 - $.0018 per performance
2010 - $.0019 per performance

Can anyone explain to me how one of the largest music-related organizations in the country can be run by people who are apparently not diehard music fans? Internet radio is such an awesome tool for people to discover new music…and this royalty schedule is likely to kill it stone dead, or - at the very least - knock out those participants who tend to offer the widest variety in their playlists. This strikes me as a move no less damaging than removing the limit of radio stations any one company can own in an area; it immediately blows the little guy out of the water, which inevitably results in less choice and more stations interested in business over an actual interest in music.

Disgusting.