using my head

Following on from my earlier post about the death of internet radio as we know it, the UK has once again followed the US model and hiked the royalty fees paid by internet radio stations to levels that will make it nearly impossible for niche stations to exist (legally) anymore. What they’ve really done is killed off one of the cheapest marketing tools the music business has ever seen. More details are in my post for the NESTA blogs:

What stations like Pandora do is provide an excellent way of selling more records. Here’s how: you type in the name of a song or musician you like, and Pandora plays you music that is similar. You may never have heard of the artist or song that Pandora plays to you, but if you like it, you can buy it from iTunes or Amazon at a single click…

Read the full post here on the Making Innovation Flourish blog >>

Yesterday was a landmark low in the recently burgeoning world of internet radio. The US Copyright Royalty Board made a royal cock-up by deciding to hike the royalty fees that internet radio stations must pay, to ridiculous levels (up to 12 times the amount they currently pay). I had a lot to say about this on my work blog at NESTA:

To me, the tragic irony in this story is the fact that the proposed royalty fee model could never have existed without the online medium itself. The fees are per song, per listener - something which could never be accurately measured in the old broadcast model, but suddenly is possible for online stations due to the trackable nature of streaming media. Net radio campaigners say this is an unfair model, as it penalises online radio unjustly compared to satellite or standard broadcast radio fees…

… Looking at the bigger picture, this is a case in point of how something like regulation could seriously impact the growth of an innovative business model. What nascent markets like these need is not overbearing regulation, but forward-thinking…

Read the full post & comment here on the Making Innovation Flourish blog >>