Save Net Radio!

So here's the deal. In early 2005, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board issued a call for participants in a hearing that would determine the royalty fee structure for "Internet transmissions" (later changed to "digital audio transmissions") of copyrighted music, for January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2010.

Long (and pretty boring) story short, on May 1, 2007 the CRB issued its final ruling on the matter, i.e., they stuck with the rates determined a little earlier in the year and denied requests by the webcasters for further hearings.

The webcasters say that the ruling would put a lot of the "smaller" companies (read: the ones whose sole business is streaming music on the web) out of business immediately, especially since the ruling is retroactive to January 1, 2006, and that it will have a stifling effect on the whole industry of broadcasting music via the web. AOL, Yahoo!, etc. were complaining too, saying that even though they could in theory pay the new royalties, it would make their (currently quite small) music streaming divisions unprofitable and prevent growth in that area.

SoundExchange, the company that apparently is the main collector of the royalties on behalf of the recording industry, successfully convinced the CRB that more money should be coming to the recording companies from webcasters-- period. Now that a bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives, with 95 (and counting) cosponsors, which would nullify the CRB decision entirely and substitute its own much reduced fee structure, SoundExchange has made public overtures that would soften the blow for "small" webcasters, but keep the original rates for "big" ones (AOL, Yahoo!, yadda yadda). The other side (the Digital Media Association and the SaveNetRadio coalition are the most prominent public representatives) is refusing to back down, for the reasons given in the preceding paragraph.

If you're still reading, thanks for bearing with me. Before writing this, I decided to look at the actual CRB ruling text directly, to make sure I wasn't being swept along on some obviously goofy populist bandwagon. It is full of mind-numbing legal and economic mumbo jumbo, and I only read a small portion of it, but what I did get through didn't do much to change my mind about supporting the actions in Congress to remediate the situation. (I had already called both senators and my representative anyway, but this here is public, right?)

Here's how I look at it. Based on what I've read from indirect sources, the House bill (and a virtually identical bill introduced in the Senate a week or so ago) would make the webcasting royalty structure identical to the one that applies to the satellite radio companies (XM and Sirius), which is a) 33 cents per listener per hour or b) 7.5% of gross revenues received, directly related to the transmission of music. The webcaster can choose which option they want applied to them.

Two people are listening to music. One is sitting in a living room, using a decent laptop with decent speakers, connected to the internet via a wireless router. The other is sitting in a car equipped with an XM radio receiver. They both listen for one hour straight, with minimal, if any, commercial interruptions. Why on earth should the webcaster have to pay more royalty money to the recording companies than XM (which charges 13 bucks a month for sending music to a single receiver) pays?

The only "internet radio" I ever listen to is Pandora (which is way cool and has one of the best web user interfaces I've ever seen, but what do I know) and Otto's Baroque Musick, but both claim (and I have no strong reason for not believing them, especially Pandora) that they will be obliterated if the CRB ruling stands, and I think that is a bad thing.

I know you want to help, so here's what you do. Click here and then click "Call your members of Congress" link toward the bottom of the screen to get the phone numbers of your senators and representative. Calling is the most "impactful" way to communicate with them. It is very easy to do. And then, if you've got a website of your own, you can place a banner on it. I'm about to try to do that now.

Thanks for reading. You're very patient.

Update - What happened to Rumba 104.5 FM

Wow-- lots of people (well, maybe 4 so far) have found my previous post by typing a question about what happened to Rumba into Google. So I will tell you all the secret knowledge I discovered by browsing to www.rumba1045.com: it has moved to 1480 AM.

Hey, AM-- that's almost as good as FM, right? Not in my car, it isn't. Anyway, presumably they weren't making as much money as they should have. Or something. Doesn't really matter.

The Day the Rumba Died

I just have to share with you folks a sad thing that has happened.

A few months ago I discovered that a Philadelphia adult rock station called Star 104.5 FM had converted to a somewhat eclectic Latin music format, and had been renamed "Rumba Ciento Cuatro Punto Cinco" (104.5). (My brother Gabriel told me today that 104.5 had actually changed a good year or two ago; I was just late finding out about it.) I was thrilled. Except for the occasional English commercial, all the talking parts were Spanish. There was a decent mix of music, including Reggaeton, Salsa-style pop, a lot of soulful ballads, etc. Not the full range of Latin music, by any means, but a decent mix.

Anyway, what I'm getting to is that this became pretty much my one radio station. I occasionally would switch to 91 FM to get traffic, or my now quite small daily dose of national and world news. But when I wasn't listening to an audio book (currently hearing: "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" by Al Franken), I was listening to Rumba.

Well, wouldn't you know, yesterday or the day before I switch to 104.5 for a little idle listening, and... the song sounds like it's in English (yes, I'm an old fogey who often can't make out lyrics in the latest crap that plays on the radio). My little denial machine actually kicked in, and soothed me with the thought that maybe this was one of those songs on Rumba that has some stretches of English lyrics. I switched away, or pushed in the audio book cassette. But then on my way home, it's undeniable: it's one of those noisy yet bland post-grunge rockers, then it's something Eddie Vetter is singing, etc.

So that's it. Just like that. No warning, no explanation, no nothing. Gone. Snatched out of my noncomprehending hands. Like the Orwellian mid-speech switch of enemies from Eurasia to Eastasia.

I guess I'll get over it pretty soon. Maybe this will end up being the thing that pushes me to finally get an MP3 player.

At the Crossroads

It's been a while. Since my last entry we've visited three more churches. It looks like we have settled on one, but I thought I'd mention the two (besides Manoa) that got just one visit.

On Easter we went to Sharon Baptist Church. We didn't know anything about it; it turns out to be an African-American megachurch, right within the Philadelphia city limits. It was founded in 1934, in South Philadelphia. In 1982 it had 282 members and was located at 59th and Catharine, in West Philadelphia. They started to have space problems, and in 1999 they constructed a brand-new building not far from the reservoir, across the city line from Bala Cynwyd.

(I'm going to take a jab at the University of Pennsylvania here. I found out about Sharon because at Angela's request I was looking for a service that started at 11:30 or 12pm. After googling around for a bit, I found this. Sharon's main location hasn't been at 59th and Catharine since *1999*, and in all this time this information hasn't been refreshed on a page dedicated to "diversity" at Penn?)

Your jaw drops when you drive up to this building. This picture that Angela took with my cell phone doesn't quite do it justice:


So anyway, it now has 6,000 members. The sanctuary itself is vast, seats two, maybe three thousand. It was pretty well filled (by the time the sermon started, anyway) on this Easter Sunday, but it was made sparklingly clear by the pastor, repeatedly, that many of the 6,000 members are not very regular in their attendance.

We were late, so we missed whatever music they might have had early in the service, but we were electrified by a performance of "He Is Worthy" by their decent-sized choir, for the offertory. It sounded *exactly* like the studio recording we hear on Praise 103.9 FM. Anyway--megachurch. Flawless multimedia. On-premises restaurant of some sort (we didn't see it). Many attendees dressed as they would going to the movies-- i.e., their regular clothes. That's a big deal for a black Baptist church, and that "come as you are" atmosphere is obviously part of the reason they have so many members.

Angela (and I, and Abigail) loved the music, but the big church thing was a bit much for her. Perhaps more than that, I think she wants church to be a little bit more churchy. I am probably misrepresenting her somewhat, but that's the best I can do at the moment.

Ok, moving on. The next week we went to the African Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas. Hard to find a bigger contrast between this place and Sharon Baptist. Angela had far fewer comments about this church-- I don't think she was really tempted to return. If folks in street clothes filling a plush concert arena isn't her idea of church, neither is an Episcopal mass, really. I wouldn't have any problem with joining a church like this, and I liked the fact that the pastor ("rector", technically) is involved in local inter-faith stuff. But I spent the first 10 years or so (until almost 14 years old) of my churchgoing life attending Catholic mass.

So finally, on April 22, we visited the church that's been staring us in the face since we moved to our current residence: Overbrook Presbyterian Church. Not too cold, not too hot. Small (15 or 20 people) but powerful traditional choir. Intimate T-shaped sanctuary, reasonably well filled. Appealing young pastor. Very multicolored congregation, good age distribution. Very clean building, in good repair. Decent amount of parking, not quite sufficient for all (I found that out when I got there five minutes late the following Sunday), but we managed to get a spot in the lot that first day (on which, incidently, we were on time!) Perfectly satisfactory accommodation for our two and a half year old. One mile from our house.

Overbrook calls itself "The Church at the Crossroads". It is located at an important intersection (of routes 1 and 30) at the edge of Philadelphia. Across the street, in Wynnewood, is Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern Bapist Seminary) and St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Seminary. A bit further down Lancaster is Lankenau Hospital, where Abigail was born. A little ways down City Avenue is St. Joseph's University. On the Philadelphia side are the sprawling neighborhoods of Wynnefield and Overbrook, both of which are majority African-American.

It's at (or relatively near, anyway) another sort of crossroads as well, which may be the reason it came "unrecommended" by someone (Angela can't remember who) at Woodland: the divide within the PC(USA) and all the other mainline denominations over how to view homosexuality in general, and ordination of non-celibate homosexuals as pastors in particular. Overbrook is part of the Covenant Network, which is trying to remove an explicit prohibition against homosexual ordination from the PC(USA) constitution (aka Book of Order). Woodland, on the other hand, is a member, albeit somewhat noncommittal, of the Confessing Church Movement, which is staunchly opposed to any change in the rule. (See also this Wikipedia article about the more general mainline Protestant phenomenon.) How noncommittal? A search of "confessing" on their website does not yield a reference to Confessing Church. But the fact remains that Woodland leans conservative enough to have voted as a congregation to follow the senior pastor's lead to join the movement in 2002, shortly before he moved on from Woodland.

Anyway, yesterday was our third visit in as many weeks. We've started to meet a few interesting people. We found out that the pastor will not be there much longer, as his family is moving out of town for his wife's work. But we still feel comfortable and secure there, and we're looking forward to setting down our roots.