The Future of Aural Moon

[Avian(Admin)]

Hi one and all!

First off: no, we're not going away. Rather, there are a few interesting developments that we need to make a decision on. Your input is greatly desired; this station "belongs" to the listener as much as it does to me. You've made this station the largest progressive rock shoutcast radio station on earth. And we want you to keep listening to Aural Moon for years to come.

As most of you are probably aware, the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) has decided to kill internet radio as we know it. It can do this, since it controls a large part of the recording copyrights in the music industry,and they've decided to impose a new internet-only royalty rates that will obliterate all but the largest webcasters.

The great site www.saveinternetradio.org descibes the situation succinctly:

Most Internet radio stations are at risk of bankruptcy, and may be forced off the air by October 20th, because of a Congressionally-imposed royalty they will soon be required to pay to record labels. (You may have heard this called a "CARP" royalty, named for the U.S. Copyright Office's Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel that held hearings on what the rate should be.)

If the record industry (the RIAA) doesn't offer a compromise "voluntary" license to smaller webcasters and/or if Congress doesn't pass emergency legislation by October 20th, most observers believe that the decision will effectively kill Internet radio. (The retroactive portion of the fees will bankrupt all but the very largest Internet-only webcasters — e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. The fees will also probably trigger the shutdown of most remaining broadcast stations' Internet simulcasts, including almost all the educational and community stations )

And that's where we stand. Wth all things Congress, you hope for the best, and prepare for the worst - we must be prepared for the current outrageous rates to go through. We play a fair deal of independent music, but even in the best case scenario, we'd have to pull a lot of great music out of the playlist to avoid paying these fees.

Add this to the already very high costs to run Aural Moon (many thanks to our donors who make it a little easier for us), and you have the making for some shakeups in the industry. Some stations have already shut down. And some are staying, trying to figure out a way through this mess.

There is one solution that we're looking at: becoming anaudiorealm.com subscription station. Aural Moon would no longer be a free station. Listeners would pay $5/month to get access to not only Aural Moon, but the many, many other stations at audiorealm.com (including classical, rock, metal, techno, news, talk, and even other progressive rock stations). By being a member in this way, our costs go way, way down, and all of our music licensing is covered (incuding ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc.), and our future would be as secure as it can be. More money to spend on great music for you?

Of course, we realize that much of our listenership comes from folks tuning us in, and finidng us by accident on their IM or iTunes dial, or inteh shoutcast.com directory. All of those links woud go away, and we'd focus on enticing people to subscribe to audiorealm.com.

How many of you would follow us to audiorealm.com? I think $5/month for all that music is a great deal. You may be thinking that you'd just listen to another free station - but there might not be any free stations around soon.

Another advantage to audiorealm.com affiliation is that we can stream in many different formats to our listeners: mp3 at 24k, 56k, and 128k. Windows Media at 21k, and 96k. (Note: those who've signed up for the subscription 128k stream will continue to get that stream for free, but no longer the 56k or 24k - and you wouldn't be subsribed to audiorealm.com. Future donations would not apply to an exculsive high-speed stream, since it will be part of the audiorealm.com subscriber deal. It would go to new music, however!)

Tell us what you think! And answer the poll as well.

Thanks,

Avian