Please Consider This

There are a lot of goons out there who see the Internet as the fastest line, direct or indirect, from your wallet into theirs, and they are hitting your elected representatives hard to open that pipeline. The latest group to try to pull a fast one is a bunch of scoundrels known as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA wants to gouge the people who have been providing Internet music in the form of Internet radio and services like Pandora.*

Rather than go through the issue myself, we'll just post an email we received recently and let you be the judge. Let me just say if you like listening to things on the Internet, your days of being able to do that may be numbered if the toothless morons** at the RIAA get their way.

Please consider the following message, and thanks for reading Prevuze.

Hi, it's Tim from Pandora, I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora. In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us. Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: CLICK HERE Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better. Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential. I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies. As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support. -Tim Westergren (Pandora founder)

Please remember, the RIAA represents the empty suits who run the recording industry, not the artists themselves. As Tim said in his message, this effort fully supports paying royalties to the artists.

*Pandora (www.pandora.com) is an interesting and fun website, no matter what your musical taste happens to be. If you haven't discovered it yet, give it a try.

**We apologize to toothless morons everywhere for comparing them to the creeps at the RIAA.