That Sound ExchangeMade an offer today
To try an’ make internet radio stations’ worries go away
But Save Net Radio still ain’t happy
No, no they ain’t happy at all
Just like
Both of them ain’t happy
And happiiiineeeeessssssssss
[The recorded portion of the tape slowly crawls to an unintelligible stop as our intrepid field reporter has once again failed to account for his TalkBoy’s brief but brilliant battery life with a fresh pack of Duracells... Garbled static cuts to the shortwave polka broadcasts previously recorded on the cassette.]
Notes: Play to the tune of Sweet Home Chicago, except substitute any reference to “California” with Sound Exchange’s proposed $2,500 cap on the minimum $500 per station/channel payments for any one online internet service, which, as part of the Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) ruling on the matter, is set to go into effect July 15. Swap any references to “Chicago” with Save Net Radio and DiMA’s polite decline of the “California” offer, describing the proposed offer’s discontinuance in 2008, two years before the CRB’s decision expires, as “a stay of execution for Internet radio.” And any meetings said to take place at “the crossroads” will most likely occur on Capitol Hill or some reasonably accommodating and mutually agreed upon hill that may or may not be a crossroads. Or perhaps even some metaphorical crossroads of internet tubes, organized in, of course, series.