The SoundExchange Billion Dollar Administrative Fee

palewook writes "On June 7th, Yahoo, RealNetworks, Pandora, and Live365 sent letters to US lawmakers emphasizing they owe SoundExchange 'administrative fees' of more than $1 billion dollars a year. These fees would be paid for the 'privilege' of collecting the increased CRB royalties effective July 15th, unless the Internet Radio Equality Act passes Congress. SoundExchange, the non-profit music industry entity, admits the levied charge of $500 per 'channel' is supposed to only cover their administrative costs. Last year, SoundExchange collected a total of $20 million dollars from the Internet radio industry. Under the new 'administrative fee' RealNetworks, which hosted 400,000 unique subscribed channels in 2006, would owe an annual administrative charge of 200 million dollars in addition to the retroactive 2006 rate hike per song played."

My heroes

[Timesprout]

They beat me to it. It's always been my dream to set up a non-profit (for everyone else except me of couse) that rakes in money by charging other companies fee levels that I just make up.

Re:If you didn't vote Libertarian YOU ASKED FORTHI

[TheRaven64]

With advocates like this, it's hard to believe people have difficulty taking Libertarians seriously.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Haaa!

[throatmonster]

...the sound of someone laughing - all the way to the bank.

I wonder what real will do....

[d3ity]

I wonder what Real Networks will do if they can't come up with the $200 million dollars they apparently owe... They'll probably stall for time... Buffering...

Resposible Government, the anti-drug

[Smight]

Government to SoundExchange: What is this?! Where did you learn to charge these outrageous administrative fees? Was it from all those lawyers I see you hanging around with?

SoundExchange to Government: I learned it from YOU OK! I learned it by watching you *sob*

SoundExchange runs out of the room while Government stares into the distance meaningfully.

Re:Only Americans will be silenced

[cabinetsoft]

In Soviet Russian, the radio listens to YOU!

That ain't funny, that's informative! The radio, the ashtray, the walls...

Re:If you didn't vote Libertarian YOU ASKED FORTHI

[bigdavesmith]

...and the conquest of the United States by Mexico.

If they can get those Cheezy Gordita Crunches down to 99 cents, count me in.

Re:My heroes

[Bodero]

It's always been my dream to set up a non-profit (for everyone else except me of couse) that rakes in money by charging other companies fee levels that I just make up.

There's always money to be made in the carbon offset business...

Re:no love lost with Real Networks, BUT -

[Jerry Smith]

...Maybe a bunch of wackos in pirate outfits would storm the place. Serve them right.

{cough}http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085959/ [imdb.com]{/cough }

Re:dollars $ dollars

[2.7182]

I was walking over to an ATM machine the other day, when I realized that many other people have the same PIN number as me. I thought "they should have a personalized PIN number." Also, my bank still uses those old CRT tubes and they are hard to read, so they really need to upgrade the whole thing. Anyway I went into the bank to sit and talk to a representative about this, and I was reading a DC comic, and the light next to me was flickering. Damn that AC current! I took out my laptop, since I wanted to learn more about CSS style sheets. (Are they under the GPL license btw ?) After about 5 minutes of reading I had a headache - I felt like an ICBM missile had hit my head! Or maybe it was from my LCD display. What I need is a vacation I thought - so I went home and started to pack my SCUBA gear.

Re:no love lost with Real Networks, BUT -

[suv4x4]

I'm surprised that some nutjob asshat hasn't yet barged into their offices and raked 'em all down with machine gun fire.

You're going to jail for this!

While I don't advocate someone blowing their office to flinders

Fine, you're off the hook...

with a bomb or some other evil terroristic act

That's is: jail time!

I am surprised that it hasn't happened yet

Oh ok, you're a fine fella.

(one would think that with all the loosely bound people in the USA, one of them would have freaked out by now and targeted them...)

Effin terrorist! JAIL!

What I DO advocate is that the RIAA and the MPAA and their associated organisations be banned

Oh, banned. That's cool I guess. ... and eliminated

Screw it, I'm calling the FBI on ya!!

Re:dollars $ dollars

[Melfina]

That would have been redundant. :p