Thanks to all the fine companies (including those listed below) who agreed to be part of our recent "RAIN Vendor Guide (Ver. 2.0)" issue. If you didn't have a chance to spend time with it yet, you can access the issue here.

From the San Jose Mercury News: "The first commercial radio station to stream its programming over the Internet has suspended its Web-based simulcasts, saying it cannot afford to pay music royalty fees.

"Promising to 'see you in that pigsty in the sky,''KPIG morning disc jockey Dallas Dobro ended seven years of continuous Webcasts Thursday with a cowboy tribute befitting the station's quirky character: 'Happy Trails,' by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

"KPIG will continue to stream a mix of live recordings made at its Watsonville studio and at station-sponsored concerts -- music that is not subject to royalty fees. Meanwhile, it will attempt to negotiate a lower royalty payment with the recording industry so it can resume its Internet service...

"'The bill [for the RIAA/Sound Exchange royalty] comes out to around $3,000 a month for KPIG, which isn't a whole lot, but KPIG is basically a small-market radio station. And right now, it's not making any money from that stream,' said Bill Goldsmith, who operates KPIG's online station. 'That's $3,000 a month that they just can't afford...'

"KPIG's sign-off jarred the station's far-flung online listeners, who wrote from Indiana, Florida and Minnesota to mourn the loss of its genre-busting music format that spans classic rock to blues to bluegrass to alternative.

"'The varied musical selections and programming exposed me to artists who never get commercial airplay,'' said Akio Patrick, a listener from Woodside. 'The record industry appears to have won this battle out of its ignorance and fear of the potential of independent Web radio.''

Read the full piece by Dawn Chmielewski in the San Juse Mercury News here.   (Archived here).

...

.. From the KPIB.com home page: "Sad Day in the CyberSty... KPIG's owners have decided that they have no choice but to suspend KPIG's live webcast in the face of the fees that would be due under the most recent Copyright Office ruling. We're definitely hoping that this is just temporary, and that a reasonable solution can be found soon..." This is a tragedy. As has been noted many times in the past couple of years by many major national publications, KPIG was one of the true treasures of Internet radio, with music and personality and character that is impossible to find on the AM and FM bands in most markets. As I write this, local listeners to 107-oink-5 FM have just heard "In My Life" by the Beatles, "Little Martha" by Jerry Douglas, "It All Went Down The Drain" by Boz Scaggs, and "Piece Of Crap" by Neil Young. (Their playlist for the last six hours is here.) An excellent Associated Press story on KPIG (from March, 2000) is here. It's mind-boggling to think that record labels and recording artists believe that they benefit from the demise of KPIG's webcast (and others; see list below). You know, if the RIAA is genuine in its stated intentions to offer a compromise royalty rate for smaller webcasters, as its executives have been telling journalists for months, now would be an excellent time for them to do so! And if the RIAA's lawyers are going to continue dragging their heels, top record label executives (who presumably actually care about marketing and promotion and sales) should get on the horn to the RIAA and ask them to move in a timely manner! -- KH ...

From Mark Lane's "Footnote" column in the Daytona Beach News-Journal: "It's been ages since I listened to commercial radio.

"Surprises have been banned from radio. Most radio stations repeat the same songs from a playlist you could write on the back of your hand. Some have self-consciously outrageous announcers with a speaking style stolen from guys in fairground dunk-the-clown booths. I was chased away years ago.

"But just lately, I have started listening again. Not to real radio -- now called "terrestrial radio" -- but to Web-based radio....These range from stations that are not unlike an old-fashioned '70s-style progressive radio station -- Jimmy Buffett's Radio Margaritaville and the alt-rock Radio Paradise -- to stations too obscure to even make it on campus.

"I've found all-lute, all-the-time stations. All Baroque. All techno/industrial hard-trance rock. All bluegrass. All pre-60s Broadway. All streaming as you read this.

"Sadly, this renaissance of listening is just too good to last. I expect most of them will shut down by next year. Then, Web radio, like FM radio, will be the dominion of Big Music.

"It doesn't have to be like that, but the usual forces of short-sighted greed, musical monoculture and power lobbying in Washington are combining to shut down Web radio...

"Since it created the problem, Congress should step in. But making sure Boccherini, Beiderbecke and bluegrass stay on the air is not a big political priority. So, I'm listening very appreciatively now. It may be a long time before I hear Dave Brubeck coming through a speaker unexpectedly..."

Read the full column here.   (Archived here.)

"Internet radio has completely changed my life..."

As a music junkie, internet radio has completely changed my life in terms of the amount of new music I listen to and buy. My world would be a much quieter one without it.

In any given week I find myself listening to: Spinner's BritPop station, Radioio (what great radio!), Radio Paradise (what great radio!), Hard Radio (we cranked it up in the office yesterday during Alice Cooper's "Poison"...a good time was had by all), Live 365's Power Pop station, Beethoven.com, JazzFM, Virgin UK, Radio Free Virgin's Soundtrack station, Listen's picks, and many more. I obviously spend a good deal of time monitoring MUSICMATCH radio as well:)

I encourage others to play around.

All these great station offerings make my life easy. All I have to do is
click play!

... Here is a growing list of webcasters who, because they don't feel they can manage webcasting royalties in a viable business, have decided that it's in their best interests to silence their streams. (We thank them for their hard work and dedication to their audiences and the industry, and wish them luck in their future endeavors...)
All80s.com	AudioCandy.com	BlueMars.org
Celtic Heritage Webradio	Chez Whitey	Entercom stations
Good Time Oldies Radio	Greater Media stations	GrrlRadio
HitRadio.biz	Hot Hit Radio	IdahosCast.com
KDFC/San Francisco	KKDV/San Francisco	KKPT/Little Rock
KOIT/San Francisco	KPIG/Freedom, CA	KTRS/St. Louis
KWXY/Cathedral City	Lotus Radio stations	McClure stations
Minion Radio	MonkeyRadio.org	MYNDFK.com
NetRockRadio.com	NextMedia stations	Perkigoth.com
Powerrocks.com	Progrock.com	RadioBoston.com
RadioCentral.com	Radio Free Akron	Radio Free BD
Radio Free Tiny Pineapple	RadioMaxMusic	RKNA: Aural Arcana
SavageRockRadio.com	Simmons Media stations	SomaFM.com
StarDogRadio.com	TagsTrance.com	The City Radio
therockfm.com	The Zoo	WAAF/Worcester
WCKW/La Place	WLUP/Chicago	WMMR/Philadelphia
WOVRadio.com	WYYB/Phoenix	Yahoo! Radio stations
Have we missed others? Use the feedback form above or e-mail us here.