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How your station can save Internet Radio

Here are some very good recommendations via Fred Jacobs on tactics for your radio station to fight the proposed CRB royalty rate hikes on streaming:

1. Run a "spot" as a "pre-roll" to your stream that encourages listeners to contact their Congress person and encourage him/her to co-sponsor the bill.

2. Run these same spots at least hourly during "commercial breaks" in your stream. This is a great way to reach the audience that most depends on this service.

3. Send an advisory to your email database. This is a great way to instantly reach thousands of your most important Internet-savvy fans.

Lots more advice at SaveNetRadio.org.

Keep in mind that this hike is very bad for radio. It will make streaming much more expensive, it will discourage stations from streaming and make many stations drop the stream altogether. It will impair your ability to compete effectively in the future just at a time when the appetite for streaming is building fast and technology will turn PC streams into the mobile equivalent of...radio.

And this: Remember that the music industry intends to level the fee playing field by increasing rates for FM and AM radio, too.

Check this out from Newsweek:

SoundExchange executive director Jon Simson would like to see terrestrial radio start paying the additional royalty. "The discrepancy doesn’t make sense," he says. "Terrestrial broadcasters should be paying performers."

So fight now - or pay later. Your choice.

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