RadioActivity.fm: Articles
On the CRB's Proposed Census Reporting And Actual Total Performances
01/10/2008Chapter 4: Adoption Rate and Participation
Let's take a brief detour for a minute here, and ask: Why is the CRB even talking about raising the recordkeeping bar when the current amount of participating webcasters is so very, very small?
I've probably talked to 100 webcasters in this last year alone, some of which have become RadioActivity.fm users. I'm happy (and proud) to help these people become compliant, royalty-paying, reports-of-use submitting webcasters. But the overwhelming majority of webcasters out there aren't yet participating in the process.
How many US webcasters are out there? The Shoutcast directory alone lists something like 26,000 broadcasting servers. And yet we have no idea how many webcasters are actually complying with the rules that the CRB has already laid out, because that kind of data isn't made available. (more on this later ...)
There are no published reports of how many webcasters are actually participating in the licensing/royalties/reporting process. If they amount of compliant stations is even close to 1% of the US webcasters out there, I would be amazed.
If the CRB honestly wishes to make this process work, why are they even talking about upping the recordkeeping benchmarks instead of how to encourage and assist these non-participating webcasters with the process?
I strongly encourage readers - and the Copyright Royalty Board - to consider this question.
Click here to continue to Part 5: A Process Badly In Need Of Transparency
|
Part 1: Part 2: Census Reporting Part 3: Actual Total Performances Part 4: Part 5: A Process Badly In Need Of Transparency Part 6: Final Thoughts |