This post does not concern any particular musician, album, or song; it concerns a great number of musicians and the albums and songs they produce in order to make a living. I’m talking about this hike in royalty rates for all Internet radio stations that will take effect on July 15. I won’t bother with the details of the thing, but the basic idea is that if the ruling passes then many internet radio stations will collapse under the financial strains of this oppressive act.

With these web-based stations will go many opportunities for independent artists to publicize their music to large, public venues, opportunities that they could not likely find on mainstream radio stations where the highest bidder gains the most air time. I know a lot of the bands I listen to nowadays I never would have known about if I or my friends did not listen to web radio. A good friend of mine practically depends on it to discovery new music. He hears a band he really likes on Live365 or Pandora, makes note of the song he heard, and then buys the album. And from what I understand, this is a very common practice. It’s not like we listeners are all a bunch of gluttonous babies leeching off of the juicy, ever plentiful teat that is Internet radio.

And speaking of the listeners, if internet radio stations start dropping like flies then we lose a lot of variety in our pursuit of musical nourishment. Don’t we deserve a little more diversity if it’s available and there are artists willing to provide? It’s like going to a high-quality buffet with large varieties of food time after time and then suddenly finding out it’s been shut down. Then you discover that your only other option for eating out is the local Grease ‘n Go (a.k.a. McDonald’s). Fan-fucking-tastic.

I have a lot more I could say about this subject, but I’ll stop here because I did not intend this blog to be about long-winded rants. I’ll leave that to LiveJournal and Xanga. But if you want to save internet radio from dying then go to this website:

http://www.savenetradio.org/

At that site you’ll find out more than I could ever tell you about this unjust ruling and how to act against it.

And I promise that I’ll write a real post soon with songs and everything.