There has been much speculation concerning the future of satellite radio and the competition it faces from the likes of iPod and Internet radio. Lets break it down.

A music player that you can stream in your car with CD quality sound and a virtual unlimited song list unless you are obsessed with simply trying to compile every song ever recorded. It is a very nice way to have your entire music catalog at your finger tips and the sound quality through your car speakers is decent. Personally I use mp3 CDs in my car. The down side to all of this is that eventually I desire live voices through my radio. Yes even musicians get bored with music and need some talk radio to change things up a bit. Switching to Satellite financial radio is what I love to do.


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Beginning Flag Day, June 14, 2008, a dedicated team of runners will run across America from Fort Irwin, CA to Arlington National Cemetery, one mile for every Soldier, Sailor, Airmen, and Marine killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. For ten weeks, team members will mark each mile with an American flag and signcard in an apolitical reflection of remembrance of each service member.


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Watching the webcast of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Music and Radio in the 21st Century: Assuring Fair Rates and Rules across Platforms” was a mind-bendingly frustrating experience, as the various parties involved pingponged randomly from topic to topic, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

If I may, I’m going to try to organize the issues in a nice, clear fashion:

WILHELMS TELLS CORKER, “[ARTISTS] CAN’T BE COMPENSATED IF THE WEBCASTERS AREN’T THERE TO PLAY THE MUSIC”: Outspoken artist representative Fred Wilhelms has posted his thoughts on Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing on Internet radio music royalties, specifically concerning his own legislative representative, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN). “It was clear Corker, my senator, wasn’t in favor of the [Internet Radio Equality Act], and had aligned himself with the forces of darkness marshaled behind the PERFORM Act, the competing bill endorsed by the RIAA and SoundExchange, which sets the royalties at ‘fair market value,’ which of course means the CRB gets to set them wherever they want.” Wilhelms was so disappointed by Corker’s stance, he wrote a letter to the Senator, and posted it in its entirety in his article. In it, he wrote, “I work for recording artists and songwriters. I firmly believe that artists deserve to be paid compensation for the commercial exploitation of their creations. Almost all of my clients are outside the present-day musical mainstream. They aren’t heard often on terrestrial radio, and that tells me they wouldn’t be heard often on an Internet radio landscape populated by only the same broadcasters. The high CRB rates insure that they will be unheard…Artists deserve to be compensated when their music is played by webcasters. They can’t be compensated if the webcasters aren’t there to play the music.” To read his comments on the hearing and his letter to Corker in full, click here.

WEBCASTER ROYALTY RATES DEBATED IN SENATE HEARING: Things didn’t go as well for webcasters on Capitol Hill yesterday as they might have hoped. After finally winning a hearing from the Senate Judiciary (a “thrown bone” after Sen. Brownback agreed to remove a webcasting amendment from another bill, see RAIN coverage here), the Internet radio industry had hoped to make some headway in convincing Congress that without royalty reform, it is doomed.


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