WFMU time 2009
It is now the moment of WFMU's Annual Thermopolyae, I mean Marathon, fundraiser. The middle of it actually. This is the point of time when WFMU a small nonprofit fm radio station in New Jersey - an orphan really as their parent entity Upsalla college went bankrupt years ago - attempts to drop everything and quickly raise the million or so dollars they need to stay in existence for another year. And it is worth it. WFMU is the single greatest human institution since the invention of the limited liability corporation, (always thought of them as like a East India company co-op). Perhaps they are the most dramatic institution since the Globe theatre. The greatest development of mankind since barbers and surgeons were differentiated into separate professions. Certainly the best use of radio airwaves since the Titanic's SOS. The most noble use of the internet since jpgs of your kitties were last posted (especially if accompanied by captions of them saying cute things in some weird kitty patois). I won't say there aren't things WFMU needs more of. Iggy Pop and the Stooges, for instance, particularly stuff off that Fun House album, especially the song TV Eye. Boy, I could listen to that song over and over again.
WFMU does music radio well. And to be blunt about it in a nation full of radio stations, they're aren't many others that do. What tides and currents that prevail in the content and broadcast world work against it. A few recent Ars Technica articles on radio news illustrate this. The first covers the Future of Music Policy day event
Panel: what does broadband policy mean for musicians? - Ars Technica. They speak of "collaborative folk cultural production processes", and the way of the "creative class" This is what Lawrence Lessig describes in his book
Remix. [WorldCat.org]. The current intellectaual property industry may believe that creation will continue despite draconian IP laws - or possibly they may not care, they may even be suited if it doesn't. After all the notion of new, better cheapens their product. At any rate, value added service, the building and rebuilding of existing ideas is central to human nature, and digital mutability is central to the current generation's way of thought and process. Against this is an essentially exploitive force that in no real way values human invention.
Two other articles deal with SoundExchange a company that collects royalty fees on behalf of the RIAA. They have reached partial agreement with webroadcasters. All this is fallout from an arbitrary and puzzlingly high fee structure announced by the Copyright Royalty Board (vaguely attached to the Federal government) two years ago. The sides were had been directed to achieve some sort of agreement by a congressional bill set in motion last year, the WebCaster Settlement act of 2008. Radio Broadcasters (like WFMU) ones who have a internet streaming simulcast of their radio broadcast as the Ars Technica article states will pay: "$0.0015 per stream, or $1.50 per thousand online listeners, in 2009. This reflects a discount of about 16 percent from the originally agreed-upon rates, according to SoundExchange. After that, the royalty rate will gradually increase to $0.0025 per stream ($2.50 per thousand listeners) by the year 2015"
SoundExchange, broadcasters reach royalty pact for streams - Ars Technica:. Web-only streamers have not reached agreement with SoundExchange yet
Webcasters: still (!) no deal on streaming royalties - Ars Technica:. The deals they have been offered are steep enough and involve stepped fee Structures that will punish or cripple any business that attempts to grow their business. Which has the effect of revealing too clearly the explicit purpose of all this. It is blatant a barrier-to-entry activity and a federal government board eagerly and gleefully made themselves complicit by initiating it. The industry forces SoundExchange represent never developed any ideas as generations, technology and the world changed about them. They now seek to punish and eliminate those who did, and use the government to protect an obsolete business model.
I'm not inclined to be my own Dj. This is a somewhat paradoxical viewpoint - I am fully inclined to be someone else's Dj, and occasionally will construct playlists on didactic day dream in iTunes. But at the moment when I am a listener, often though not always when I am engaged in other things. Then it is time as Fairport Convention once sang "...then you can do the work for me" That is what I like about WFMU
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