Ripping music doesn’t always burn artists..

Just today had this article sent to me: Internet radio to go offline in royalty protest: Dozens of music stations plan to go dark after panel rules against them.

Expect dead silence Tuesday on your favorite Internet radio channels such as Pandora, Yahoo!Music and MTV Online. Music webcasters are protesting higher music royalties they’ll have to pay the recording industry starting July 15, which some say are high enough to kill the industry.

Dozens of companies are taking part — from big one such as Yahoo and MTV, to public radio stations like KCRW in Los Angeles that streams music online, to small webcasters all over cyberspace.

A panel of copyright judges ruled earlier in May that online radio stations should pay the recording industry each time a song is heard by a listener, on top of a minimum amount for each channel they operate. The ruling also requires stations to pay retroactively starting January 2006.

I was wondering why I was already having problems with KCRW.

At work, I listen to internet radio half the time (CBC3 almost exclusively now that KCRW seems to be out of it, at least here in Canada) and the other half of the time the cds I’ve burned onto my PC.

I buy about a cd a week. I borrow at least 5 cds a week from the library and rip about one of those. So I am listening to about 250 cds a year without the artist getting paid. Its wrong but its not.

I think artists should be paid and I think that if you believe in an artist you should buy their cds. The problem is how do you know who to buy. There is just too much music in the world these days and why should you have to buy blind. Hence the library and radio and friends etc.

Internet radio is important to me because its generally a little farther ranging than the local stuff and also because I can listen to it without commercials. Its really important to me because thats how I discover new artists. And when I hear somebody new, I go out and buy their cd. Without my free access, I would never know who the artist was and would never end up buying their music. I also promote their music and encourage other people to buy it through this blog or in person.

If these stations go permanently dark, it will stop people like me from buying as much music. And it will stop us from spreading the word. That being said, I think there might be a case for charging any station that sells advertising space being charged for the music that puts them into the position to do so. Charge those fuckers. But leave the ad free stations alone. They are promoting the music and the musicians.