We've already had dozens of NAB attendees let us know they'll be joining us for the RAIN Reader Cocktail Party, tomorrow 5-7p at the Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant. It's just one block west of the main convention hotel, the Sheraton (click the link for directions). No need to RSVP, just join us! Hope to see you tomorrow.

BY PAUL MALONEY
In a newsletter published by the arm of the recording industry established to collect webcasting royalties, an article intended to familiarize artists with streaming technology explains that streaming audio is not the same as downloading, that the quality of streamed audio is inferior to that of compact discs, and that the prevalent streaming technologies (at least claim to) provide copyright protection of streamed content.

The article is certainly well-written, informative, and should prove valuable to artists to are trying to get a better grasp on how their music might be used in the digital age.

But some feel the points raised are significant because it is widely believed a central argument used by record industry lobbyists in convincing lawmakers to pass 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act was that Internet webcasting involved the transfer of perfect digital copies which users could keep and trade, thereby cutting into music sales.

The piece appears in SoundExchange's "NewsExchange" newsletter (August 2002 Volume II Issue II, here in Adobe Acrobat format).

The article, called "How Are They Streaming Your Music?," explains that streaming content "can only be listened to...while (it is) being received," as opposed to files downloaded from file-sharing services like Napster and Kazaa, which consist "of receiving a complete piece of audio or video for storage on your computer. A downloaded file can be played back later."

(Note: the article does deal with "caching," or "buffering," the temporary storage of streamed content to account for inconsistencies in the transfer rate of the data and to ensure smoother listening. However, it is acknowledged that this is indeed also temporary.)

Later, it's explained, that given that most home Net users receive data via slow dialup connections, "for these listeners the best quality that can be achieved is less than FM broadcast quality. Meanwhile, CD audio requires more than 20 times the amount of data that today's modems can handle." This fact serves as an introduction to the concept of file compression, and notes that even broadband connections "do not eliminate the need for lower data rates."

The first step taken by "almost all technologies," according to the piece, for reducing the size of files for streaming, is the reduction of "the sampling rate to 22,100 samples per second and converting the stereo audio to mono. This cuts the data to one-fourth the size of CD audio."

The article concludes with a quick description of the Real, Microsoft Windows Media, and Apple QuickTime technologies. The author acknowledges (in his description of the first two systems at least) that the technology "purports" to provide protection of content against unauthorized use.

Again, many DMCA opponents assume that the idea (perhaps along with other arguments) that streaming would allow the transfer of "storable, perfect digital copies" of music swayed Congress into mandating that webcasters would be obligated to pay the owners of copyrighted music for the use of their property (even while over-the-air broadcasters have never had this same obligation).

Regardless, the article is a positive step in allowing insight for artists (and others) to better understand what's involved with the streaming process.

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From a press release on BusinessWire: " BRS Media's Web-Radio released their latest statistics today at The NAB Radio Show. As predicted, the numbers indicate that the current copyright crisis is having a direct impact on the number of stations broadcasting online. And, for the first time since BRS Media began tracking Internet Radio back in 1995, US based stations now represent less then fifty percent of the stations webcasting online.

"In the last year alone the number of radio webcasters has declined by thirty one percent (31%), with US stations accounting for the majority of this steep decline. Prompted by the current copyright issue, well over one thousand US stations quit broadcasting online. And while the current number of radio stations broadcasting their signal on the Net sits at 3940, that number is significantly lower than the all time high of 5710 stations from last year.

"Prior to this year US based stations represented nearly 60% of all stations webcasting...

"Remarked George T. Bundy, Chairman & CEO of BRS Media Inc., 'As long as this copyright issue continues to hang over the heads of US based webcasters we foresee the current decline continuing. However, on the International side steady growth continues, as many of these markets will likely benefit from the current turmoil plaguing the US market.'"

Read this entire press release here.

This is Part 3 of 5 in a series...


BY JOEL WILLER
for Radio And Internet Newsletter
The University of Louisiana's at Monroe's student radio station, in anticipation of new copyright royalty recordkeeping regulations, has recently expended considerable effort to review the station's streaming server access logs. Among other things, this analysis led station personnel to question when is a performance not a performance?

It seems that for each and every month spanning the past two years the station has experienced one or more streaming sessions extending for at least 24 hours. Eighty-eight percent of the past 24 months had at least one session lasting more than 36 hours, 46% of the months had at least one session lasting 48 hours, and so forth.

Indeed, one month for which KXUL will soon have to pay retroactive royalty fees recorded a single session lasting 143.95 hours, that's six straight days! Without benefit of a protracted government study, the KXUL staff has concluded that just because a streaming client is connected to the station's streaming server, that doesn't mean someone is listening.

If a tree falls in the woods, and no one hears it, is it still a performance?

Marathon connections
Under the sound recording performance rate determination adopted by the Librarian of Congress it is. The record generated by KXUL proves the folly of a royalty rate tied to "performances" in this new technological frontier. Especially for low-volume streaming services like many college radio stations, just a few such marathon connections each month -- I cannot call these listening sessions -- dramatically and unfairly skew the "performance" numbers in favor of the copyright owners.

The expected proliferation of always-on broadband Web connections will only increase this phenomenon, as Internet radio stations continue to hum along long after office cubicle occupants have gone home to pat their kids on the head and toss a Frisbee to ol' Fido.

In the CARP proceeding, the RIAA urged that only a per- performance model be adopted. The final CARP report states that "a per-performance metric 'is directly tied to the nature of the right being licensed.'" This can only be true if a "performance" can be accurately measured, which it cannot be.

To compound the insult, yet-to-be-announced Copyright Office recordkeeping regulations promise to bury small noncommercial webcasters with an immense data collection burden premised on describing these "performances." The Recording Industry Association of America argues that such information is vital for its SoundExchange division, which will be responsible for distributing royalties generated by these "performances."

What performances?

Joel Willer is an Assistant Professor of Mass Communications at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and general manager of the school's radio station KXUL. There will be two more installments to this series. Read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here...