A number of online broadcasters have gone silent today to protest new rates for royalties that were awarded by a 3 judge panel earlier this year and are set to come due on July 15th. The new rates fail to take into account the lean years when a company is getting up and running and so MTV, Pandora, Live365, and others have all vowed to be silent. Soundexchange, the music industry group in charge of collecting the royalties appears not to be phased by the action saying they are in negotiations with many smaller players and the protest is a "moot point". I don't subscribe to any of these services so it hasn't affected me, I prefer to ignore the music industry association all together and listen to podsafe music and recordings. The only one of the above that I have listened to on occasion is Pandora, but it shut Canadians out after the new rates came into effect. CBC has the story here.
