Record companies get greedy, fat cats want their money, ‘the man’ wants to be paid and internet radio is going to suffer all because of it. There’s been a few stories hitting the web lately, a few changes in legislation and centred around doubling and trebling license fees for music for internet radio stations. The problem now is that these fees, in some cases, are going to force internet radio stations to shut their virtual doors.

I’m a really big fan of internet radio, have tried the station setup before  but am quite happy releasing the podcasts instead for KKM. But, in work where you don’t have a massive music collection or want to bring in your CDs with you or have an actual radio you can switch on, we resort to internet radio - choosing the music we want to listen to.

Sure enough, the national broadcasters (RTE Radio 1, 2FM, Today FM etc.) can all be listened to online, as can our local station KCLR 96FM but we still want control over the music without the chat or listening to topics that have no interest or appeal to us. So, in our case we choose Pandora.

With Pandora you enter a particular song or artist that you like and you create a ’station’ based around your initial choice. Pandora selects music for you based on similarities in genre, instrument use, vocal styling etc. and keeps doling out the tracks. You can give each track in turn (as it plays) a thumbs up or thumbs down. Thumbs up will keep the track playing, thumbs down will remove that artist and further refine your selection of music on the station. Fantastic service, free as a bird, and you get loads of mainstream artists and some fantastic hidden gems as well.

Here’s what Pandora say themselves…

The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora.  The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all.  Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

I don’t know what the statistics are in Ireland but they reckon that across the states there are over 7 million internet radio listeners online at any one time, with 20% of the US 18-34 year old market listening to internet radio every week. I love the pure variety of stations (.977’s 80s channel being my favourite), check your iTunes radio station list for tons of them…

The future of internet radio must be saved and stations shouldn’t be bullied into closing their doors! So, SaveNetRadio.org has been created with all the facts and figures and if you think you can make a difference or want to find out more about saving the future of internet radio then visit SaveNetRadio.org and follow their instructions. Maybe we can do something about it on the Irish scene? That’s the beauty of the internet - its not just American!