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The music industry is at it again. On Friday March 2nd, the U.S. government (specifically, the Copyright Royalty Board, or “CRB”) announced the new royalty rates Internet radio webcasters must pay to license the music they play for the years 2006-2010 (the fees are retroactive). The issue is the disproportionate royalty structure that is well over the revenue generated for even the largest and most profitable internet radio sites.

Sites like Digitally Imported (di.fm) and Pandora (pandora.com) could not even begin to cover the fees that they would incur based on the new royalty rates. For an explanation and examples of how the royalties will work, check out the FAQ at SaveTheStreams.org.

What you can do…

Sign the online petition.

Send a message to your representatives in Congress.

Get PSAs and Banners, Spread the word!

Support your favorite internet radio site. (check out our Digitally Imported sidebar widget for WordPress)

TechCrunch has a pretty good round up of social music sites and services (more than just internet radio). If you like music or like discovering music, you should definitely check out the post. While it’s a good write up, it’s difficult to cover everything so don’t skip the comments. TechCrunch readers have contributed more music sites and services and you don’t want to miss those.

While not a social music site or service, don’t forget we have our own little WordPress sidebar widget for di.fm/sky.fm. The sidebar widget allows you to configure the widget to either display a specific di.fm or sky.fm channel or randomly rotate through the available channels.

It seems like a natural progression to go from text based blogging to live audio and video, but does BlogTalkRadio have what it takes to push the market? We have already seen vlogging, podcasting, and video broadcasting services so there is definitely a market for this. However, having taken a look at BlogTalkRadio, we’re not sure that it’s the best attempt.

While there are some good qualities, such as MP3/Podcast archives, caller queues, revenue sharing, etc. There are a few hurdles. According to their FAQ, Windows Media Player is required to listen to the broadcasts. If you want to text chat with the host, you will have to use an IM client that’s compatible with the one the host is using. And, to speak live with the host you will have to call into a special number (VoIP, landline, mobile, etc.) It would have been nice if they were able to consolidate everything into one nice little package.

It would be more compelling if you can host a live audio and video broadcast straight from your blog page. Add a listener queue that the host can control and allow text messaging. Give the host the ability to activate and deactivate audio/video of listeners with mics and webcams. Keep all the existing features of archiving, revenue sharing, etc. of BlogTalkRadio. Deliver this app through Flash, widgetize it and you have a widely accessible and usable system without the need to have users piece together the various applications and technologies that BlogTalkRadio currently uses.

Performance and technical details aside, we believe that it is completely possible to deliver such a package. There are advantages to utilizing a phone based system and leveraging existing IM chat software, but will people actually call in to listen on a cell phone while they’re walking to lunch? Or, would it be more effective to streamline the online experience while allowing users to be able to take it offline via MP3/Podcast downloads? Your guess is as good as ours. Our gut feeling says that the market is good, the business model is good, but the implementation falls a little short.

We’ll keep an eye on BlogTalkRadio and see how they progress.

For another take on BlogTalkRadio, Marshall Kirkpatrick has a write up over at TechCrunch.