Q: What is the Best Way Retard a New Distribution Paradigm? A: Make it a Losing Proposition!

Ok, I love radio. In the last 25 years, though, my favorite medium has effectively been denuded through consolidation. The effect is that radio is as profitable as it has ever been, but it is completely boring. In many medium sized markets you may have 20 or so stations, three or four of which have any semblance of local programming. This, by the way, includes NPR. My local NPR AM juggernaut broadcasts 24 hours a day and I can count on one hand the number of substantial local programs that find any airtime.

What this means is that if you like local varieties you need to get on the net and stream. There's lots of college, public and commercial radio that streams as well as kick ass podcasts. But because of a struggle over how much digital radio and other digital deliverers should pay for play, we may have a real problem on our hands. The Copyright Royalty Board has held a number of proceedings on webcasting rates and terms , as Idolator notes

The board decided to go with the rate suggestions put forth by SoundExchange*, the division of the RIAA focused on collecting digital royalties, and not broadcasters; perhaps unsurprisingly, they're prohibitively expensive for even the largest broadcasters, and in some cases the required royalty payments may equal or exceed 100% of an Internet radio station's revenue.

Kurt Hansen explains

Because a typical Internet radio station plays about 16 songs an hour, that's a royalty obligation in 2006 of about 1.28 cents per listener-hour.

In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour.

Even adding in ancillary revenues from occasional video gateway ads, banner ads on the website, and so forth, total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.

That math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.

Ok, so for every dollar I take in, you get a dollar. Hmmm? Profit anyone?

Ok, so if this is the case then this is completely unreasonable, which isn't to say it will somehow be dealt with in the future. Here's the reason why. This fight isn't about your small webcaster. Rather it is about how much XM or Sirius will pay to play. And the law being what it is, the consequences could be devastating to the little guy. If you want to see who was involved in this fight you can click here, here and here. I have only skimmed the surface here, but this is interesting to say the least. Basically what you have is "new means of distribution" meets "established organization with lots of clout", something we have seen seen before, When, you ask? Why, thanks for the question. Allow me to explain.. ahem...

Back in the old days of the US there was this old timey medium called broadcasting they wanted to use popular music on their airwaves. The big problem was that the most popular music was controlled by ASCAP, who had the rights to the best songs and wanted these broadcasters to pay through the nose to play them. ASCAP had the clout and the broadcasters did. Furthermore, ASCAP was notoriously picky about who got to join closed the door on many aspirant songwriters who they viewed as unskilled, unwashed and undesirable. The broadcasters looked at this option and decided to build a new organization that "opened the door" for these artists and the result was, you guessed it, BMI:

BMI was founded by radio executives to provide competition in the field of performing rights, to assure royalty payments to writers and publishers of music not represented by the existing performing right organization and to provide an alternative source of licensing for all music users.

BMI’s history coincides with one of the most vibrant, evolving and challenging periods in music history. As popular music has moved from big-band to rock & roll and hip-hop, and formats have evolved from 78 and 33 1/3-rpm vinyl records to compact discs, MP3s and beyond, BMI has worked on behalf of its members to maintain a leadership position not only in the United States, but worldwide.

Underlying everything BMI does is its philosophy: an open-door policy that welcomes songwriters, composers and music publishers of all disciplines, and helps them develop both the creative and business skills crucial to a career in music.

Ok, so this took about 17 years to happen, so don't expect new digital distribution organizations to get their act together anytime soon. And, yes, I do have suggestions on how to get their act together and with whom they should work with (and invest). Right now I would say that the terms Long Tail, EFF and Creative Commons could all be substantial keys. Let's just say that developing organizations that cultivate a new labor force and new contractual understandings will be key. Much in the same way that BMI was the key to getting hillbilly music on the air and those artists gaining some wealth as a result, I would hope that some people are out there beating similar bushes so that we still have an option to Clear Channel sanctioned radio and the artists who exists in those formats.


Technorati Tags: Web2.0, digitaldistribution, soundexchange, BMI, longtail, EFF, CreativeCommons, Idolator, CopyrightRoyaltyBoard, digitalradio, webcasting, podcasting

Teaching 2.0, Initial Thoughts

In the last three years I have slowly introduced Web 2.0 technologies into the classroom with various levels of success. Because classrooms have so many other demands, I have to say that this portion has never really gained the kind of attention that it needs. Also, a lot of this has involved some significant stumbles. But that is to be expected. If you are teaching Wikis, Blogging and the like, you are teaching on terms that the students think they fully understand and so many teachers are convinced that they do not. Neither are completely true, but I do think they need to noted.

For example, Will Richardson claims that many teachers need to recognize that they have a "digital accent"

Marc Prensky says that students are Digital Natives while most educators are veritable Digital Immigrants who were not born in to technology and will always keep their accents. We print out our e-mail, prefer plain paper to digital paper, and still use phone books to look up numbers. This divide makes bringing technology to our students more difficult, and our accents many times get in the way of our use of technology. But accents are easier to lose than you might think, especially when all sorts of constructivist technologies are lowering the bar to entry.

To some extent I would buy that, but I do not think that students really understand Web 2.0 at all. My experience is that beyond e-mail and instant message, your average student is as "passive" a media consumer when it comes to the Web as they are with TV. The great majority of my students have never published a website until we make them do so. When it comes to Web 2.0, the environment of Blogs and Wikis mean something to students but Podcasts and RSS mean very little to a great majority. I teach mass media and when I ask students about podcasting very few of them partake in either end, consuming let alone producing. And if I was to ask a student to mkae their own Wiki they wouldn't know how to do it, despite the fact that PBWiki makes it very easy to do so.
Bryan Alexander notes in EDUCAUSE REVIEW | March/April 2006, Volume 41, Number 2 that

the concepts, projects, and practices of Web 2.0 as a whole, insofar as we have surveyed them, are fluid and emergent. They are also so accessible as to be launched and interconnected at a pace rapid even by Web standards. At the same time, many services are hosted externally to academia. They are the creations of enthusiasts or business enterprises and do not necessarily embrace the culture of higher education.

This is true of the entire culture: both educators and students. As a scholar who tries to teach Web 2.0 this is an area where so much is up in the air right now. Don't believe me? Download Firefox 2.0 and page through the "Add Ons" portion of the Firefox home and you will see a number 2.0 like extensions, each of which allow users to tag, comment and interact with and on the web. And these extensions, like Diigo will mean the creation of a World Wide Palimpsest. I am all for that and I think students and scholars should be too... however, so many of them have no clue how to utilize any of these resources. Right now we, student and scholar alike, are in a position to play collective catch up. True those students grew up with Web 1.0, but all of us new to 2.0, and we need to understand that.
So, how to teach it? Here are a few suggestions...

1) First and foremost, develop exercises that are low risk and allow for "maximum play" -- When you teach Blogging and Wikiing I firmly believe that the deepest, most profound lessons come from repeated, short term engagement that see the exercise as something that has low-level consequences. Much like a videogame, the proficiencies can only be developed over time, with repeated engagement and with a sense that this means very little in terms of grade. I often add a wiki or a blog to a course but do not "grade" it so much as I check to see that is done. This works well with small classrooms (I wouldn't even bother to do this with a 200 person classroom) where you can build groups and teams who you can hold accountable with a checkmark. The issue of the grade is counterintuitive to many, but has precedence in writing and oral competency: You give small assignments that have minimal impacts on the grade, but they all add up. What I have found is that by making web work as additional to a larger paper then you can a) avoid grading web work that feels punitive (and, I would argue, severely unjust) for most people unless they are in a Web Design class and b) you find that it actually benefits the organization and composition of the traditional paper.

2) Make students work in groups if possible -- The whole point of 2.0 is collective intelligence and students get a better sense of what this means if they can see how others can and do contribute. This includes the shy kid who never speaks up. When they work in these groups it teaches the students that the power of Web 2.0 is where you get intelligence from non-traditional sources and unexpected places.

3)Do one 2.0 thing at a time in a class unless that class is explicitly about the Web-- Teaching Web 2.0 should really be seen as an additive, not a main course. If you are a historian and you would like to have your class use Zotero simply to acquire bibliographic information, then you are not asking much other than you require them to use free and easy-to-use browsers and attachments. You may ask them to do little more than write Zotero and tell them what you like and what you would like to see their device do (or be better at doing). In my eyes, this allows students to understand how research is dependent on collective tools and standards. You can take time to discuss this in class, with other students as well as peers. This is a moment where you can begin to discuss many "inside baseball" issues that are pertinent to your work and the work of your colleagues.

So, I will continue my thoughts on this later, including some thoughts as to why I believe that this connects to a number of media issues that have, historically, operated with little academic or professional attention given to them.

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