No More Internet Radio

Or, maybe you'll get some internet radio, from the deep-pocketed broadcasting corporations that can afford it. Smaller, more unique broadcasters will not be able to afford the new fees.

WIDR will likely have to take down our web stream, though there may be a possibility that, if we limit the traffic -- like, only allow ten streams at the same time or something like that -- then we could keep it up.

All these years in radio, playing stuff that no one would buy if they had never heard it on the radio, has me convinced that the benefits of unlimited free broadcast go toward the artists and the labels. It is free advertising -- what is it that the RIAA can not understand about this concept? If the listeners don't hear it, they won't buy it. The more people hear it, the more they buy it. (The other possibility has always been that the RIAA would like to control the music so that a manageable amount of Big Hit Makers are heard, and get the big hits, and so they don't have to deal with the thousands who sell just enough music to justify their existence. Too bad the days of the Big Hit Makers are done.)

Anyway, call your congress people. Click the thing below. And remember, you can always listen to WIDR and SwaG! on this thing called a radio, tuned to 89.1 on the FM dial, in the Kalamazoo, Mich., area.