“Yahoo! Inc. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit may shut down their Web radio services after being hit with a 38 percent increase in royalties to air music,” Meg Tirrell reports for Bloomberg.
“‘We’re not going to stay in the business if cost is more than we make long term,’ Ian Rogers, general manager at Yahoo’s music unit, said in an interview,” Tirrell reports.
“Yahoo and AOL stopped directing users to their radio sites after SoundExchange, the Washington-based group representing artists and record labels, began collecting the higher fees in July. Those royalties may stifle the growth of Internet radio, which increased listeners 39 percent in the past year, according to researcher ComScore Inc. in Reston, Virginia,” Tirrell reports.
“SoundExchange, which represents record companies including Sony BMG, Warner Music Group Corp., and Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, sought the royalty increase amid a drop in industry revenue. U.S. sales of compact discs fell 20 percent from 2004 to 2006, according to data from the Recording Industry Association of America,” Tirrell reports.
Full article here.
The greedy bastard music cartels are committing suicide in slo-mo before our very eyes. It’s a macabre show, but oh, so satisfying! 
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. – W. Edwards Deming
The english language allows for creation of such words…
Bob was convinced all his efforts would be fruitless
The fruitlessness of Bobs efforts was convincing enough
—
welcome to the party
The big music studios are DEAD. A classic case of death by greed.
The present & future goes to artists publishing directly to iTMS.
Amazing what can happen when you give customers what they want…
It’s not exactly surprising that Yahoo and AOL are abandoning Web radio. Since the audience did so years ago and all.
@R
Agree there must be a new business model, not just for music but for all work that can be digitally distributed, because if it is digital it wants to be free, that’s just human nature. Right or wrong it is a losing battle for artists to expect or count on revenue from music, movies, literary works, etc. The pirates will simply eat them alive.
As to the music companies, they lost the only ally they might have had; artists, because most musicians aligned with a label make no money from album sales. Artists money results from concerts, merchandise, etc. The majority of artists simply don’t have anything to lose if their music is pirated.
Dumb and dumber. Now they’ll get 38% of nothing. What kind of accountants are they hiring these days?
I say piss on ’em
Unfortunately, intelligence and rational thought are things that liberals long ago decided were evil and caused “inequality”. They’ve been trying to eradicate them ever since.
I like Chuckle. She has a lot of enlightening and insightful things to say. I’m looking forward to more U.S.-centric comments from you on this worldwide forum. Finally someone on the world stage who doesn’t make the U.S. look foolish. Keep posting, Chuckle!
Your potential. Our passion.™
@Zune Tang
I have to admit that Chuckle said some things in this thread that were insightful and enlightening, and factual and full of factualness. I also have to admit that a thread isn’t a thread without a bit of insightful zarcasm from Zune Tang.
Usful Ijit
Chuckle – Presumably you are a conservative, which is not inherently offensive to me. Many of my well-educated friends and family members are conservatives, and that is their right, and I respect their choices based on that philosophy.
Your contention that liberals lack intelligence is not supported by anything factual. If you are basing your opinion on observations you have made, for example, the grammatical, logic or spelling errors made by someone with an otherwise rational dislike for the current administration and their ties to the religious right, then you may want re-examine your logic, as the current leader of the conservative movement, President Bush, occasionally falls short of delivering grammatically perfect sentences. This does not necessarily mean he (President Bush) is stupid. It is only evidence that he may be stupid, which when combined with evidence of his numerous, well-documented errors in judgment, strengthen the argument that he may well be, in fact, stupid.
You probably made your comments as a joke. Ha-ha! You are a comedic genius. Bravo, sir.
I have not observed any correlation of party affiliation and intelligence. It has been asserted by some sociologist that liberals tend to be better educated (as are Mac users), but that doesn’t prove they have higher IQs, except by implication.
None of this has anything to do with the collective behavior of the recording industry. It is safe to say that the entertainment industry, when viewed as a whole, has been too slow to recognize how the technological advances of the last decade have made the major music labels and film/television studios increasingly irrelevant. Most likely the recording industry will be absorbed eventually by content providers like Apple, Amazon, and Google.
I have been happily boycotting the major label’s product for several years now (with a few exceptions – Radiohead being one), as independent labels and DIY musicians/film-makers have been producing generally higher quality music and film than the over-budgeted crap excreted by the majors, and any profits accumulated by the independents usually go into the pockets of the creators, not up the noses of the middlemen.
Geez here it goes again.
Any kind of minor squawk turns in to a political debate. If a person is going to read a post from someone on their political point of view on a website, and then attack them for their belief, no matter how nice, smart, factual, funny, enlightening, well thought out before hand, logical, okay you get the ideal. This isn’t the place for it. And nobody ever has convinced the other one to concede and see it their way or gives a shit.
I’m a very conservative Republican and I don’t care to explain why or try to convince Liberal Democrats to give up their beliefs or admit their wrong etc. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference on this Mac site.
Geez, give it up
You guys are quoting Demming now?
Color me very impressed. The man was a genius, way ahead of his time in the 50s, and most businesses STILL don’t get it.
@ballonknot
You are correct in the genius of Deming. Unfortunately, and maybe inevitably, his 14 points are ignored. Human nature and the protection of individual and corporate comfort, protection of the status quo, often overrule what seem commonsense decisions, business or otherwise. Let the dinosaurs greet the meteors.
Well said trex67.
I could be a republican if we go back 30-40 years. I’m afraid many of the current republicans have lost their way. Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for the last seven (or so) years it isn’t hard to see.
Wait…are we still talking about the dumb-ass music cartel?
If the Internet Radio guys wanted to force a rethink by the Shadowland Music Execs, they should pick a different method. Saying Yah Boo Sucks and stomping off just wont cut it.
Maybe if they instead chose to only air artists who were independent of SoundExchange or were prepared to grant airing rights independent of them or dealt with those Labels who were not signed up to SoundExchange, then it would be see as a threat to them unless they dropped their royalties again.
Just a thought.
You Amuricans are so funny!
I still find it incredibly amusing how many people resort to identifying themselves in one of two (count ’em, TWO) groups just to feel like they belong.
The sad fact is, that despite all the rhetoric, the Rebuplicrat and Democran … oh, wait.. the Rebublican and Democrat parties may have different philosophical roots and voter bases, but in PRACTICE, they are indistinguishable. In a nutshell, BOTH parties are guilty as Nero of fiddling while Rome burns. Neither will sacrifice temporary votes or popularity polls to stand for a “belief”. You remember belief? Opinions that one stands behind?
There has been no House or Senate in the last 20+ years willing to stand up to “opinion polls” of the moment and vote for something that would be GOOD FOR THE COUNTRY. The fact is, a Congress must be willing to consider long-term advantages over short-term popularity and votes. Sadly, this doesn’t happen any longer.
Color me a Libertarian, because neither of the “2” shoes fits me very well.
If I were Yahoo and AOL, I would drop internet radio. Why support GREEDY overpaid execs like those at the record cartels. Let them cut there own throats and they’ll have only themselves to blame!
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It sucks for everyone else but there GREED will eventually come back to BITE them and the listeners will get the last laugh!
What blucaso said…
GlassHollow & blucaso
You’ve both made good points.
GlassHollow: This site is not the appropriate place to be tangentially debating political topics, unless the topic is itself somehow political, e.g. some legislation that would affect MDN reader’s rights. My diatribe was a response to the insult directed at “liberals.” I have a problem with the use of the word “liberal” in the pejorative sense. There isn’t really an equivalent, derogatory use of the word “conservative,” not because liberals are nicer, but because the word is too closely identified to cautious action. Anyone can have a “conservative” view of a non-political topic, while the word liberal, which literally means “to give freely,” or to be generous, is usually used in the political context. The liberal use of something (words, chocolate chips, whatever) is the exception, of course.
Christians were also insulted, by therepguy, by the use of the word “fascist.” I do not equate Christianity with fascism, but the evangelical movement in this country is by and large a political movement closely associated with conservative politics. (And if the “liberals” can be maligned as socialists, then certainly the “conservatives” could be categorized as fascists, since both descriptions are equally absurd.) It is ironic that some self-described Christians would align themselves with the Republican party, because the tenets of Christianity (as I interpret them – and that is literally) are actually liberal in the extreme. But I tend to view all organized religions as enabling varying degrees of self-delusion, even the most well-meaning ones. I realize this is offensive to some believers, and I would apologize to them, however, according to some of those people, I deserve to go to Hell, which I find at least equally offensive.
blucaso is also correct in pointing out that the two party system is inadequate to reflect the vast diversity of American society. (And sometimes I find myself agreeing with Libertarians, at least momentarily, and if it were truly human nature to look out for everyone else’s well-being, it would be the most logical system of governance.) Unfortunately, our current system is increasingly a self-perpetuating one that would take an earth-shattering event to depose. Maybe that meteor that will wipe out those record industry dinosaurs…
Anyway, nobody made you read this. And I love my Macs, so I’m not all bad.
What Poo said…
I find it hilarious that it only took 5 posts before this forum degenerated into childish political nonsense.
AOL and Yahoo should do what Steve Jobs did – say No! Let them leave when the contracts expire and let any bands publish their music on the terms that AOL and Yahoo are happy with. The labels will cower back after you call their bluff – they did with iTunes!
Its amazing how many idiots want to turn a technology item into a political statement. Go back to your AOL chat rooms, fools.
When you hijack a thread like this for politics, you’re a troll. Trolls are only a problem when you feed them. The web is not new and shame on those of you who don’t know better.
Believe it or not, there might be a topic here that some of us would like to comment on/discuss. ON TOPIC.
====
I think this is one of the biggest blunders the recording industry made. Radio was such a phenomenally successful promotional vehicle for the record industry that they used to (illegally) pay THEM for airplay. But instead of updating that process for the diversity of channels that the net enabled (that could support the diversity of artists that digital technology enabled) they are crushing it.
Who benefits from the crushing of Internet Radio? Illegal filesharing and that infernal ipod. In an age of ever increasing musical diversity (this is a GOLDEN age of recorded music!) sharing is replacing broadcast radio for discovery and iPods on shuffle program beautifully for an audience of one.
When they first moved in this direction instead of exploiting Internet Radio, I truly wondered, What were they thinking?
Now we know. They were clueless, content to remain that way, and simply wanted to kill all things new and digital. No strategy, not even an evil one. Just cluelessness.
They are likely to succeed in killing internet radio as any kind of real force. They are certain to succeed in killing themselves.
Doug Morris’ misunderstanding of technology is this: you don’t have to understand the technology! Technology will enable certain things. Things a child can understand.
What you have to understand is your freaking customers! And look to provide them value.
Unfortunately making billions of dollars selling shiny plastic discs did not require executives who cared about why people actually bought that overpriced plastic.
Steve Jobs is not all that smart technically. He simply has a few clues about what provides value to people. In the Valley of the Clueless, he has become the king.