Good news for webcasting: ASCAP negotiates new deal with stations

This cleans up an old deal from a few years ago that threatened to kill webcasting, and prevent the new medium from becoming a force.

The whole licensing thing is still pretty screwed up and prevents a lot of great broadcasters from streaming their programming over the web. Hopefully, this is a step in the right direction.

Web radio gets $1.7 billion boost

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers announced Monday that it has reached a $1.7 billion deal with the Radio Music License Committee to let stations legally stream their on-air content over the Internet.

With the deal, the radio group said, its 12,000 member stations gain the right to program ASCAP-regulated music online simultaneously with their on-air signals. The two industry groups labeled the agreement as the largest licensing deal in the history of American radio.

(snip)

The groups said the agreement includes retroactive licensing fees for the years 2001 to 2003 and establishes a new guideline to be followed from 2004 until 2009. The deal replaces an existing system of revenue-based licensing fees with a royalties schedule for stations that will stream significant amounts of ASCAP-controlled content.

Like I said, it's confusing, especially when you factor in the RIAA's fingers in the webcasting pie. But at least things are cleaned up a bit with ASCAP. Hopefully, this will help boost webcasting as a whole. It would be nice to get real variety on the radio, especially with the coming of improved wireless capability.

Here's a little about a webcaster that was almost killed by ridiculous licensing:

http://www.somafm.com/about/