This does not look good for us...

[jtmckinley]

Originally Posted by lotus

The Moon in not commercial, so I hope it does not apply.

I'm not a lawyer, but unfortunately I fear it will apply unless it is changed Lotus, I'm pretty sure AM is considered commercial even though it does not sell advertising to my knowledge. I imagine the Moon is not really who SoundExchange intends to target, but if AM didn't pay the fees Jim would put himself at legal risk and I very much doubt he wants to do that even though AM might be "under the radar". From what I know about it (not much), AM is already paying the current rates. So by trying to squeeze all they can from the bigger broadcasters they're pushing out the niche broadcasters.

The media companies are in a tizzy right now because they see more and more people turning to the internet for their entertainment and they fear their lock on the business is slipping away so they lobby US politicians to enact laws to try to keep their media business dominance. And this is the result, hopefully the US public can influence our leaders and get the law modified, but I'm not at all sanguine about that, especially since most of the US public is completely ignorant of the fact that this is going on.

FWIW, I added my signature to the petition link posted by Andyyy.

[mossy]

I've skimmed through it.

The assumption in all this is that the Moon is a non commercial station. Yes?

That said, and according to my understanding:

Non commercial webcasters are allowed an allowance of 159,140 Aggregate Tuning Hours per month before the "per tune" fees will kick in. If a station keeps below the 159,140 ACH allowed per month, the fee will be a flat $500 per year.

See page 58 of the document to see how to calculate ACH. I calculated 100 average US listeners to yield 73,000 ACH, well below their limit. I'm not sure if I'm understanding ACH completely though, or calculating correctly so perhaps someone else could also take a look.

See also page 61, 102 for more on ACH, and 106 as a synopsis.

[Rick and Roll]

I've been holding off because I'm not sure I can really add anything - we'll have to react to whatever is done. I doubt this will have a real effect on us, but it's all speculation for me.

Any consternation on my part would be a waste of effort, and preaching to the choir.

They ought to go after the pirates to sell CD's by the song BEFORE the disc is released. Seen that movie too many times.....

None of this money is going to the artists anyway, so it's patently illegal. Let them lock me up, I'm ready