Save Net Radio, update

There has been a lot of coverage of the internet radio Day of Silence next week (May 8th), a protest against the new royalty rates. Those that don't turn the music off will be playing Public Service Announcements. NPR, ClearChannel, SomaFM, and Digitally Imported are the strangest group of bed fellows I've seen in awhile. But with 25% of radio listeners now tuning in to web simulcasts, you'd expect the big boys have a concern about this too. And the U.S. Congress has listened... it introduced bill HR 2060, "the Internet Radio Equality Act". As you can imagine, SoundExchange is not happy about this; their offer of special deals for selected webcasters fell on flat ears.

But it's not over until it's over. So don't forget to either call or email your representative in support of HR 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act.

A Beautiful Machine

A Beautiful Machine (archive.org page)
Embryo netlabel releases
Post Rock, Shoegazer

Solar Winds, White Noise, Antigravity: Shining
Home: Home
Another Time EP: The Last Time

A Beautiful Machine -- a band from Australia, I'm not sure they're together anymore. These releases are from 2004 and earlier. And again, so hard to just pick a few to post here, I had their complete releases playing all weekend.

Berklee Internet Radio Network

Finally, a post about internet radio that is not (entirely) about a recent copyright board decision. Berklee College of Music presents BIRN: four internet radio streams including one that features Berklee graduates, and another about what they listen to.

I spotted this item about BIRN on Wired's Listening Post. The Listening Post (RSS) has been coming up on my Google news alerts a lot lately.

Just in case you haven't yet, it's not too late to inform your members of congress about your views about the CRB decision. Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren explains that the higher rates won't mean more money for artists, and even with the royalty rates in place now, nobody is expected to retire to their yacht in the Caribbean anytime soon.

French Teen Idol

French Teen Idol (myspace): Enlightened False Consciousness
LostChildren netlabel release
post-rock instrumental ambient

Enlightened False Consciousness
Ode To A Departing Friend

French Teen Idol (myspace): self-titled release
Nishi netlabel release
Shouting Can Have Different Meanings
Lamb

Many many gems here, hard to pick just two from each of these releases. This is mostly instrumental music, and orchestrations of found recordings. Beautiful awesome music.

News Update

The Sansa Connect is the newest MP3 player on the block, featuring wifi, and the ability to download from Yahoo's music service, as well as stream internet radio.

Radio? What Radio? The copyright board didn't budge on it's decision to greatly increase royalty rates, and the future of net radio now hangs on an act of the U.S. Congress to restore the diversity we've become accustomed to. David DeJean wrote about the decision in Information Week... he also wrote a pretty good survey of Internet Radio sites recently. I wonder which ones will be able to afford the new royalty rates.

Meanwhile, over in the music download business, AnywhereCD, offered customers download only copies of CDs for sale. This was for customers who didn't want to take delivery of the physical CDs. Somebody balked, I read it was a record company. You can still get your CDs in MP3 download only, but AnywhereCD will store the physical CD, and destroy it after the auditing requirements are met. Read the whole story.

Noise Room

Noise Room: The End of the Lord's Constellation
LostChildren netlabel release
post-rock post-metal instrumental ambient

Friends

Back. Vacation, visits with relatives and friends. All good. Thankfully Lost Children haven't been on vacation -- new releases await. I think Noise Room (from Italy) have personally welcomed me back with this anthemic homage to friends.