Internet radio licensing

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An Internet radio license is a specific type of broadcast license that allows the licensee to operate an Internet radio station. The licensing authority and number of licenses required varies from country to country, with some countries requiring multiple to cover various areas of a station's operation, [1] and other countries not having stringent licensing procedures in place. Licensing costs also vary, based on the number of listeners that a station has, as well as other factors such as the number of songs played, the number of broadcast hours, and whether tracks are dubbed to a digital playout system. [1]

Contents

Licensing fees for Internet radio have often been the subject of controversy. For example, in 1998, the passing of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act meant that US-based Internet radio and satellite radio stations would have to pay separate royalties to recording artists and sound recording copyright owners, unlike traditional over-the-air stations that paid royalties only for the use of the underlying musical works. This led to the creation of the SaveNetRadio.org petition group, [2] in addition to the proposal of the Internet Radio Equality Act.

In some countries, stations which broadcast via other mediums – for example, by AM, FM and DAB digital radio – typically must also obtain a separate broadcast license in order to simultaneously broadcast via the Internet.

Multimedia content is intellectual property. These regulations on this property differ from country to country; however, the general rule is that the station must own, or have a license to broadcast the content that is covered under copyright regulations. Content that has been released under some creative commons licenses, public domain or similar can be streamed with no special content licensing requirements. However the content licensed under non-free cultural Creative Commons licenses with non-commercial (NC) clause cannot be streamed if Internet broadcast station has any form of advertising, either in the stream or on the station website. [3]

Internet radio licensing by country

Netherlands

Internet radio licensing in the Netherlands is partially dealt with by the main Dutch royalty body BUMA/STEMRA, which charges a fixed fee in order for a station to broadcast via the Internet. [4]

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Internet radio stations may obtain licenses from both the MCPS-PRS Alliance and Phonographic Performance Limited. [1] These licences are optional, in that they are only required to compensate rights holders (a legal requirement). For a station broadcasting only libre or original content works, a licence isn't required to operate an internet radio station and no Ofcom Licence is required for Internet broadcasting.

Although the fees for the MCPS-PRS Alliance is largely fixed, the fees for Phonographic Performance Limited is calculated based on the number of tracks played per hour, in addition to the number of listeners (calculated via Internet radio audience measurement). [1] In addition to these two main licenses, stations may also pay the PPL dubbing fee in order to store those tracks to a hard-drive or other storage device for playout, [1] and the MCPS-PRS TV and Radio Advertisement License in order to use commercial copyrighted music in advertisements and promotional pieces. [1] The multitude of licenses required, and the accumulative cost of them all, have priced many small stations out of running sustainably via Internet mediums with the exception of stations that play solely freely licensed content.

Hungary

In Hungary, internet radio stations must obtain licences both the Association of Hungarian Record Companies and the Artisjus Hungarian Copyright Protection Association [5] [ circular reference ]. [6] They have fixed fees, that means cca. 95 EUR per month together, plus 4% of the Income of the station. In 2015 Rendőrség (English: ′Guard of Order′ or Police) in coordinated action was raided more than 200 'illegal' stations, seized streaming servers, PCs. 1–2 years later the owners were charged with violation of copyright law. Since the new Media Law was adopted in 2011, Internet Stations must obtain a special licence from the NMHH (National Media and Communications Authority) by sending the exact schedule and financial plan. According to the plans, licensed internet radio stations are required to include music made in Hungary 35% of broadcasting time, and must send weekly reports from the aired contents to the Authority, like FM stations now.

North America

Neither the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States nor the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in Canada currently require a licence for broadcasts via the Internet originating in their respective countries. [7] [8] However, stations that play recorded music are required to pay licensing fees or royalties through ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC, depending upon which organization licensed the recording. SoundExchange also works with music industry partners in the United States and around the world to collect performance royalties generated through airplay on Internet radio stations.

Stations that broadcast only via the Internet may voluntarily register for a standardised identifier or call sign through Internet Radio Uniform Callsign (IRUC), [9] an industry organisation that provides the system as a means to efficiently catalog participating stations in the United States, Canada and Mexico; these call signs are not mandatory and are not a license to broadcast [10] and do not exempt the broadcaster from paying music licensing fees. IRUC's system utilizes standardised call sign prefixes as allocated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). [11]

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American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers American not-for-profit performance-rights organization

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that protects its members' musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance and compensating them accordingly.

PRS for Music British music rights society

PRS for Music Limited is a British music copyright collective, made up of two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS). It undertakes collective rights management for musical works on behalf of its 140,000 members. PRS for Music was formed in 1997 following the MCPS-PRS Alliance. In 2009, PRS and MCPS-PRS Alliance realigned their brands and became PRS for Music.

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Community radio

Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popular and relevant to a local, specific audience but is often overlooked by commercial or mass-media broadcasters. Community radio stations are operated, owned, and influenced by the communities they serve. They are generally nonprofit and provide a mechanism for enabling individuals, groups, and communities to tell their own stories, to share experiences and, in a media-rich world, to become creators and contributors of media.

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LIVE365 is an Internet radio broadcasting and listening network where users are able to create their own online radio stations, or choose to listen to thousands of human curated stations created by people from around the globe. LIVE365 is unique in that online radio stations on the LIVE365 network were created and managed by music and talk enthusiasts, including both hobbyists and professional broadcasters. LIVE365 also has many well established AM and FM stations that utilized the LIVE365 broadcasting platform to simulcast their terrestrial radio streams via the Live365 distribution network. The Live365 network also features radio stations from well-known artists such as Johnny Cash, David Byrne, Pat Metheny, Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa, and more. LIVE365 was created in 1999, and remains one of the longest running internet radio websites for listeners and broadcasters.

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APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in Australia and New Zealand. The two organisations work together to license public performances and administer performance, communication and reproduction rights on behalf of their members, who are creators of musical works, aiming to ensure fair payments to members and to defend their rights under the Australian Copyright Act (1968).

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Phonographic Performance Limited British music licensing company

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Digital DJ licensing

A digital DJ licence is required in some countries, including the United Kingdom, Finland, Belgium and Italy, to publicly play digital copies of copyrighted music. The licence allows a DJ to copy music from original CDs, vinyl or other media, to a computer's hard drive, an MP3 player or other digital audio players, for example to be used with a vinyl emulation software program, or in some cases to other digital media, such as CD-R or MiniDisc. In the countries where digital DJ licensing is used, the licence is also required for playing music originally bought and downloaded directly on to a computer, usually in MP3 or similar format, unless the licence of the online music store explicitly allows the public performance of the downloaded tracks.

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SIAE Italian copyright collecting organisation

SIAE is the Italian copyright collecting agency. Founded in 1882 in the Kingdom of Italy, it is the monopolist intermediary between the authors of musical tracks and consumers, managing the economic aspects and the distribution of money from royalties of Italian-copyrighted music to authors and on their behalf. In the 2000s and 2010s, SIAE is known for the controversial decision to claim payment through the "Private Copy Siae Tax" for every blank CD, DVD, and HDD sold in Italy since 2001. From 2013 to February 2015, the main spokesperson of the SIAE organization was the songwriter Gino Paoli, who was the president of the society. Paoli resigned after he was investigated for tax evasion; Filippo Sugar was then appointed as a president. The current president is Mogol, famous Italian lyricist.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Mediauk.com - Licences for an Internet radio station
  2. ↑ SaveNetRadio.org; the website is now a personal blog, no longer related to the original petition group
  3. ↑ David Childers (2011). Internet Broadcasters Information Handbook, Fifth Edition (PDF version)
  4. ↑ BUMA/STEMRA official website (Dutch language)
  5. ↑ Artisjus Wikipedia entry (in Hungarian) [ circular reference ]
  6. ↑ Artisjus website (English language)
  7. ↑ FCC Licensing Systems
  8. ↑ CRTC Broadcast Licensing Process
  9. ↑ Internet Radio Station Standardised Callsign Usage
  10. ↑ FAQ: "Is an IRUC callsign a broadcasting license?"
  11. ↑ ITU Table of International Call Sign Series
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