Radio Heads, and others,
I promised some of you more information about fees for streaming or producing MP3s, so here it is. Have a look if you are a web radio using this format, or pass it on. 

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The two paragraphs below from www.mp3licensing.com, the website of MP3 source code owners Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer Institute, deal with upcoming licensing fees for content providers using the MP3 format. Three things are important to note: first, the minimum fee of US$ 15,000 for a distribution license, second the vague status of MP3 streaming licenses, and third, the fact that this status will change as of Jan 1, 2001. What they currently refer to as a small anual minimum could quickly become a very prohibitive fee without warning. 

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--------------------begin www.mp3licensing.com
###Electronic Music Distribution
Electronic Music Distribution systems, where mp3 encoded data is sold to end-users, are licensed as follows: 
1.0 % of the price charged to the listener (minimum US$ 0.01 per download).
US$ 15,000 annual minimum, payable upon signature and each following year in January, fully creditable against annual sales. Reporting is to be based on the system as used by the copyright organizations. 
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###Broadcasting/Streaming
We do not charge royalties for mp3 streaming or mp3 broadcasting (e.g. Internet Radio) until the end of the year 2000. Beyond this date we anticipate to charge a small annual minimum and a percentage of revenue. However, this model is not yet fully developed because we cannot yet oversee where this new market is going. 
---------------------end www.mp3licensing.com
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The site also contains information about royalties for each encoder, decoder or MP3 related hardware product downloaded or purchased.
This is interesting on a theoretical note because the use of other, non music related formats is hardly licensed at all. Think what kind of legal issues would come up if someone wanted to start charging fees for the use of the JPEG format in every website on Earth, for example. Also, the enforcement of such licensing fees would most likely fall on money producing operations such as commercial radio stations and record labels, and on pesky operations like Napster, but could also be used as a tool against smaller operators (read = net.radios) if a big company (goevernment, or whatever...) felt they were threatening enough.
Regardless, it may well be time to investigate new, nonproprietary and open source compression options for streaming net.radio. I am not making any sales pitch for the format call Ogg Vorbis that is currently under development, but it has been touted as having the same compression rate with better sound, a free plug in for most media players, and all the same options for streaming which Windows Media, RealAudio and Icecast MP3 offer. 

The homepage for Ogg Vorbis is www.vorbis.com.
If anyone has any other particlular favorites, I would love to hear about them. Thanks to Zeljko Blace of MAMA in Zagreb for the initial warning shots... 

All the best,
Derek Holzer
www.radiojeleni.cz




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