 RAIN 02/17: Webcasters wait on word of additional streaming deals ·Feb 17, 11:13 AM VARIOUS WEBCASTER GROUPS CONTINUE TO AWAIT ROYALTY SETTLEMENTSThough the Webcaster Settlement Act deadline (February 15) has passed, webcasters belonging to various classes of operation continue to anticipate a settlement for streaming royalties that will allow them to continue to operate.
Late yesterday (here) came word of a deal between SoundExchange and the National Association of Broadcasters establishing “per-performance” However, representatives of Small Commercial Webcasters (such as AccuRadio and RadioIO), The Webcaster Settlement Act, passed last fall, gave SoundExchange until this past Sunday to negotiate royalty deals with various classes of webcasters that would carry the weight of law and could potentially be in effect through 2015 (more here).
DIRECTV OWNER FLOATS SIRIUS $530 MM LIFE RAFTDirecTV parent Liberty Media has announced it will loan Sirius XM $530 million to help pay debt and save it from going bankrupt. Liberty will get 40% of Sirius common stock and seats on the Sirius board of directors. Sirius has $175 million in debt due today, another $350 million due in May, and a total debt of $3.2 billion. Sirius XM creditors had reportedly made clear that should the satellite radio company enter bankruptcy, they would seek the ouster of chairman Mel Karmazin.NAB “MORTGAGED ONLINE FUTURE” WITH SX DEAL, SAYS DEL COLLIANO Reacting to news of the SoundExchange/NAB streaming royalty deal and Liberty Media’s loan to Sirius XM, Jerry Del Colliano asks today, “How insane is it that commercial broadcasting, which is dying at the hands of debt-ridden consolidators, and satellite radio that can’t even merge it’s way beyond debt to profitability, have deals with the music industry that they think they can manage?” The NAB, according to Del Colliano (and Bob Bellin, whom he quotes), did its members no favors with the royalty deal. “Wasn’t it the consolidator-endorsed NAB that recently  wasted millions of radio dollars — your dollars — on fighting satellite radio?,” Del Colliano writes. “Satellite radio — never a threat to anyone except the NAB looking for relevance.” The NAB “got you a lousy deal — where you pay royalties even though your webcasts are probably not going to make a significant profit.” Read the column here.
OXENFORD EXPLAINS PERFORMANCE COMPLEMENT WAIVER IN SX/NAB DEALAside from the actual royalty rates, the SoundExchange/NAB deal announced yesterday will waive certain limits on the way broacasters present the music they stream that are imposed by 1998’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Because copyright owners feared streaming music would harm CD sales, the Sound Recording Performance Complement was added to the DMCA.As industry attorney David Oxenford explains (here), as per the SRPC, webcasters are not allowed to preannounce when a song will play; not play more than 3 songs in a row by the same artist; not play more than 4 songs by same artist in a 3 hour period; not play more than 2 songs from same CD in a row; and must display song title, artist and CD title on the website or player window as the song plays. Rules like these, obviously, could make it difficult for on-air broadcasters to adapt their programming to online, especially if they run tight rotations of music, extended artist features, etc. “It will be interesting to see the details of this agreement setting out what aspects of these rules are being waived,” Oxenford writes. share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
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royalties through 2015, and relaxing the “sound performance complement” which restricted radio playlists (see Oxenford below). That makes just two major classes of webcasters — commercial broadcasters and public radio groups (see 
Digital Media Association (DiMA) members (like Pandora and Live365), and college broadcasters and religious broadcasters have been negotiating with SoundExchange, and presumably continue to, each in hopes of a settlement for their class of webcasting.
