AccuRadio, along with thousands of other U.S. webcasters, plans to turn off our music streams and go silent for 24 hours today, Tuesday, June 26th.
AccuRadio is turning off the music to demonstrate the "silence" that Internet radio may be reduced to permanently after July 15th, the day on which 17 months' worth of retroactive royalty payments -- at new, exceedingly high rates, as set by the Copyright Royalty Board -- are due.
If these new royalties are implemented, we believe it will lead to the virtual shutdown of this country's Internet radio industry, AccuRadio included. (This new royalty rate -- which is 0% of revenues for broadcast radio stations and less than 7.5% of revevenes for satellite radio operators -- works out to over 150% of our revenues!)
Accuradio