Act NOW to save Internet radio!

Thanks for your interest in keeping Internet radio alive!

First some background:

If you keep up with music news, you have probably heard about the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). This is a group formed by the five largest record labels to put pressure on the government to make laws that favor the record labels as the way they are used to doing business is changed by the Internet. This is the same group that will sue anyone they catch downloading music for free.

The big companies that support this group are afraid they will make less money in a digital world but instead of learning how to compete fairly they are trying to squash the competition. On their behalf the RIAA pressured the Copyright Royalty Board to increase the rates that are paid by Internet radio stations for the right to play music on the Internet. TonyBear.com is among the thousands of Internet broadcasters who ALREADY pay substantial royalties to license the music we play for you. Now this initiative asks stations to pay $500 per year, per station and INCREASES what we pay per song, per listener.

Typically TonyBear.com plays about 15 songs an hour. Under the new rate, that's a royalty obligation in 2006 of about 1.28 cents per listener-hour. Last year I racked up more than 500,000 listener hours. I was probably headed for double in 2007. You do the math - I'm a little teary-eyed right now!

There's not enough interest in the world for advertising and sponsorship on Internet radio to offset that kind of expense, so that means the small guys like yours truly are gonna have to cut-and-run. This means that your choices for where you get your music will be limited unless you tell the people in Washington to roll all this back.

Take action now and join in the voices rising up to undo this. Click the links to the left and find out how to write your congressman, and sign a petition being circulated worldwide to make sure we are heard.

Only you can save Internet radio. Copy and paste the following into an email to your congressman today:

I do not support The Copyright Royalty Board's (CRB) March 2nd decision to substantially increase royalty rates. Not only will it impact my choices, but the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) manipulation of these rates, and the CRB's indifference will hurt working artists, damage small record labels and force law abiding small webcasters, already paying a large portion of their revenue per month in royalties, out of business. This decision will also damage hundreds of small businesses providing goods and services to working artists, small record labels and small webcasters.

I respectfully ask that you evaluate the CRB decision and do whatever is necessary to establish a reasonable royalty rate for all the parties involved.