SENATE JUDICIARY HEARING FOCUSES ON NET RADIO ROYALTIES: The Senate Judiciary Committee meeting today on music royalties, officially titled, “Music and Radio in the 21st Century: Assuring Fair Rates and Rules across Platforms,” was intended to focus on the PERFORM Act, but seemed to markedly drift towards the contentious issue of Internet radio royalties. Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy (pictured right), a proponent of the Internet Radio Equality Act, spoke out against PERFORM’s call to base royalties on a nebulous “fair market value,” which he’s seen result in disaster (in the form of the CRB Internet radio royalties — based on the similar “willing buyer / willing seller” standard). The IREA would return webcasting royalty determinations to the standard known as 801(b)1, which uses concepts of “fairness” to determine royalties and has been used for years successfully in other determinations, but was replaced by “willing buyer / willing seller” in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (for more, read RAIN‘s coverage here). Kennedy argued that basing rates on a hypothetical market without taking into account how the rates would affect real-world businesses led to the untenable rates determined by the CRB, and insisting on a “fair market value” basis for PERFORM would lead to similar results. The committee was presided over by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) (pictured left), who introduced the PERFORM Act last year (more here). Though Kennedy made a compelling case for 801(b)1’s proven track record of workable, equitable royalty solutions, Feinstein brushed off the argument by admitting, “I’m not familiar with 801(b)1,” and returned to PERFORM’s “fair market value.” In support of “fair market value” was Jeffrey Harleston, Geffen Records Head of Operations, and SoundExchange executive director John Simson, who stated the 801(b)1 standard is out of date. Artist John Ondrasik (of Five for Fighting) argued royalty pay-outs to artists are too small, while singer/songwriter Matt Nathanson reasoned that new technology like Internet radio helps smaller artists promote themselves, where they would be shut out of traditional media. Full testimonies are available here. Tomorrow’s RAIN will feature full coverage of the committee hearing.

ACCURADIO’S STATEMENT TO THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Several small commercial Internet radio stations, to ensure their viewpoints and interests were not lost amongst those of record labels, large media webcasters, and recording artists, submitted written statements for today’s Senate Judiciary Hearing on music royalties. RAIN will publish several of these statements this week. We begin today with the statement submitted by AccuRadio founder (and RAIN publisher) Kurt Hanson, excerpted immediately below:

My name is Kurt Hanson, and I am the founder of AccuRadio.com, a relatively small but well-respected webcaster offering consumers over 320 channels of rock, pop, jazz, country, R&B, classical, Celtic, Broadway, indie rock, cabaret, hip-hop, pop standards, Christian, salsa, and more, with an audience of over 300,000 listeners per month. Senators, I appreciate the opportunity to make a statement to your committee. Before Congress considers extending a sound recordings performance royalty to broadcast radio, I urge you to consider the incredible damage that a similar a royalty is doing to the medium of Internet radio…

Continue reading here.

NO BROADCASTERS AT SENATE HEARING: In Tom Taylor’s coverage of today’s Senate hearing in Radio-Info, he points out that while record labels, SoundExchange, recording artists, and Internet radio were represented at the Senate Judiciary Hearing today on music royalties, no broadcast radio representatives were invited. Cathy Rought of the Free Radio Alliance found this absence interesting, since the meeting was to cover royalties across all distribution platforms. “The most interesting part of this ‘fairness’ Judiciary Committee hearing run by Senator Feinstein is that not one radio broadcaster has been invited to discuss the impact of royalties on broadcasters and local communities,” she stated. Read Taylor’s full coverage here.

CBS RADIO, WITH ADDITION OF AOL CHANNELS, TAKES JUNE WEBCAST METRICS LEAD: CBS Radio took the top slot in Ando Media’s Internet Radio Top 20 webcast metrics for June 2008. Thanks to the addition of AOL Radio channels, CBS jumped to 95,143 AQH in June from 51,120 in May (6AM to Midnight EST, Monday through Sunday). Clear Channel, the previous #1 webcaster, dropped to second, falling from 76,965 AQH last month to 66,203 in June.
To see a bigger version of this chart, as well as M-F 6AM-8PM numbers, click here.

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