Tuesday, June 26th, is A Day of Silence, in which virtually all major and minor online stations will shut down regular programming as a protest against the new high music royalties for Internet radio, established by the Copyright Royalty Board in March.
KCRW will produce a one-hour program—D-Day for Webcasters— featuring Pandora, Live365, Yahoo, AccuRadio, SomaFM, indie webcaster Bagel Radio and public radio station WAMU/Washington, DC among others. They will join host Ruth Seymour, KCRW’s General Manager, to describe the effects that the new rates will have on their ability to stream and to serve audiences online.
D-Day for Webcasters will be webcast all day Tuesday, June 26th on KCRW.com. It will be also be broadcast on KCRW’s airwaves on Tuesday, June 26th from 2 to 3 pm PDT.
Webcasters are supporting the Internet Radio Equality Act, which has garnered bipartisan support in the House as well as the Senate. In addition, they have filed appeals and a request for a stay with the US District Court in Washington, DC.
However, if none of these tactics succeed, webcasters will be required to send checks to Sound Exchange, the collection agency for the record companies and the artists, on July 15th. Rates are retroactive to 2006.
