TWISTED SISTER Guitarist Comments On Proposed New Digital Royalty Rates

April 7, 2007

According to RadioInk.com, music recording artists from across the country have announced their support for the new digital royalty rates announced recently by the Copyright Royalty Board. The new rates, they feel, "better align the per-stream compensation performing artists and record labels received from the digital play of their music with the fair market value of their work."

According to a recent announcement, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board is planning to introduce a new rate structure for Internet radio broadcasters, one that would see rates double from the current $.0008 per play to $.0019 per play by 2010.

Regardless of the broadcasting level, each station will be required to pay a minimum annual fee of $500, which covers up to 159,140 aggregate tuning hours (ATH) per month. The result represents a victory for SoundExchange, a group that collects and administers royalties related to the use of master recordings within non-interactive streams.

Jay Jay French of TWISTED SISTER stated, "With the shrinking royalties from the usual sources, the ever-expanding digital universe is apparently becoming the future and, before our very eyes, it is here now. I wholeheartedly support all organizations that endeavor to collect and account to all the hard-working artists whose material is exploited. I applaud these new royalty increases as they scratch the surface of the new world order."

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