Save Internet Radio

Subject: Increasing Royalties on Internet Radio

Dear Mr. Elected Official,

Do you remember when you were young and how great radio was? Did you ever get a chance to hear WNEW in the 60s or 70s, or WMMS? There was such a great diversity of music then, unprogrammed for the most part, when you never knew what you were going to get. On a rainy day, you may get the Beatles for 6 hours in a row. DJs were creative, responsive to the culture, and you were constantly exposed to new and different music, which then, actually (gasp) SOLD.

Not so today. In the era of ClearChannel, DJs are just hired monkeys, driven by corporate executives who only care about scads and scads of profit, who do not pass it on to their clients, the music artists, who have already sold their creative souls to focus groups rather than following their instincts. And then you're left with Christine Aguilera.

Internet radio is the last bastion of creativity. There aren't going to be profits made if all of them go out of business - you can't get royalties off nothing. Yet, this is where I hear all my new music, and then go and buy it. Sure, not everyone buys it, but that will just drive corporate radio to find new ways to sell it. But this way? This is lose-lose for everyone.

Please don't kill Internet radio.