As you may know, the major record labels have pressured Congress to levy even more exorbitant
fees against internet radio. Back in 2002, they introduced these fees - which we have to pay on top of artist royalties - which made it nearly impossible to run an internet radio station as even a break-even proposition. Because of these fees, I shut down Invisible Radio, and launched this site. Fortunately, a compromise was worked out to protect college radio and NPR, which allowed stations run by a nonprofit to pay a much smaller rate.

New legislation has increased the rates for everyone, several times over. As far as I know, there is no exception for nonprofits or anyone else. The minimum fee for a station is $500, so a site with numerous channels like Live365 or Pandora would owe hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

AM and FM radio do not pay these fees - they are a patently unfair assault, perpetrated by a near-monopoly of broadcasters and record labels who are terrified of new technology and the competition it engenders. There was a time in this country when antitrust legislation was enforced, and monopolies like Clear Channel and Warner/Sony/EMI/Universal were discouraged, but sadly we no longer live in such times.

However, there is hope. Congressman Jay Inslee, a Democrat from Washington State, has introduced the Internet Radio Equality Act (HR 2060), which will immediately strike down these unfair rates that threaten to cripple, if not utterly destroy internet broadcasting.

Please, please, if you live in the U.S., contact your representative in Congress and ask them to support HR 2060. Click here for contact info.