COURAGE, TRUTH & BOOTY:

This is precious. The FCC is now taking pirate radio complaints online! http://www.fcc.gov/eb/PIRIX/ I think it would terrible of people used this to report stations that didn't exist using up the precious and overworked FCC Field Agents. And you just know those sneaky pirate supporters do things like that. It might even make the system useless. That would be bad. That would be wrong. These sneaky guys should NOT even THINK about using http://www.fcc.gov/eb/PIRIX/ to report a station that isn't even there. That would be evil, immoral and just wrong. So wrong.

It's becoming clear that analog (and HD radio, for that matter) radio is dead. Who listens to FM anymore? Not many. Most people only listen in their cars, and even that's being replaced by ipods, Sat. radio and MP3 CD's. At home, if you have internet, you have the richest music listening imaginable. From Pandora to LastFM to tens of thousands of streaming radio stations. So.. commercial radio, NPR, LPFM or even pirate radio.. who cares? Or more accurately, who's listening to anything non digital? No one I think.

This, is my Dog, Matey.

Arrrrrrrr... Wow. I just can't believe it. They killed internet radio! The MAIN reason we decided not to fight the pirate radio fight long term was it didn't matter, the internet was going to fill int he gaps anyway so why bother? Well, clearly, we got that one wrong. From ars Technica at this link . Check this out: A panel of judges at the Copyright Royalty Board has denied a request from the NPR and a number of other webcasters to reconsider a March ruling that would force Internet radio services to pay crippling royalties. The panel's ruling reaffirmed the original CRB decision in every respect, with the exception of how the royalties will be calculated. Instead of charging a royalty for each time a song is heard by a listener online, Internet broadcasters will be able pay royalties based on average listening hours through the end of 2008. Wow. I mean fuckin A wow... I'm floored. Well guys, time to get out the van, mixers and transmitters again. Let's roc...

I'd pretty much given up on the whole FM spectrum and decided that, with the advent of cheap streaming radio and podcasts, it didn't much matter anymore. No need to put up an underground FM station. Just set up a streaming radio station. Get your self broadcasting needs taken care of with a podcast (which often is what's played on an internet streaming radio station) Ah.. no more. The damned recording industry is trying it's damnest to kill that off too (or worse, turn it into another commercial filled wasteland impossible to listen to). I'm thinking, maybe it's time again to go for the FM spectrum. Or, at the very least, help some other folks I know that are interested in doing it to get up and running. SoundExchange Defends Internet Radio Royalty Rates SoundExchange recently defended a revised streaming radio royalty rate structure as passed by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), arguing that the ruling was "fair". In a statement issued Thursday,...