Diddy and Biggie had it right...It IS all about the Benjamins.

I have ridiculously eclectic taste in music, much to the detriment of my coworkers. In any given day, my musical taste will range from Chopin to Deathcab to Gregorian monks to DJ Sparky. I like it all, and then some. Now, my personal music collection, while decently sized, does not come close to containing all the genres of music I like. To get my fix of the obscure (and obnoxious) music that I don't own, I turn to internet radio, particularly accuradio.com, because I can sift through their stations and create my own subchannels to suit my diverse tastes.

Were it not for internet radio, there are several artists I would not have discovered, and several CDs I would not have otherwise purchased.

However, my listening pleasure is about to be severely disrupted, and I'm more than a little pissed about it. When Metallica sued Napster, it was obnoxious, but I could understand their point. Album sales dropped drastically when music became downloadable on ye olde innernets. So making people pay per song makes sense to me, since music is a product, after all, and people gots to get paid.

Traditional radio stations (the kind you get on a standard AM/FM radio, not that satellite shit) do NOT pay royalties to artists, because radio play is free promotion for artists. Having your song played on the radio means you're reaching a wider audience and, chances are, some one will not only like what they hear, they'll be prompted to go buy your CD. Sounds resonable to me.

Internet radio, one would think, serves the same purpose, but record execs don't see it that way. Even though it's pretty difficult to pirate songs from radio streams, execs are convinced that internet radio is another form of copyright infringement, and they're making the internet radio sites pay. The Copyright Royalty Board passed legislation in May of 2007, charging internet radio stations for each song played. Now, the fee is only $.0000008 per play, which seems ridiculously small, but consider how many people listen to internet radio, at any given moment, and for how long, the duration of so many songs, it's easy to see how this number grows and grows and grows.

There was talk of legislation to nullify the May 2007 decision, H.R.2060, because it's truly unfair to punish internet radio simply because they can track their listeners and traditional radio can't. However, this legislation has sat at a stand still since July of 2008, and appears to be going no where.

I was STILL ok with this, because accuradio seems to be doing ok, despite the fact that almost 30% of their advertising income (their ONLY income) goes to the recording academy.

Then I watched the Grammy's, and listened to Neil Portnow pontificate on stronger legislation for recording artists' rights concerning internet airplay, and I wanted to set fire to the closest FYE. How dare he! The only reason I've bought half the CDs I currently own is because I discovered them on internet radio sites, and he wants to shut down that method of musical discovery?

That's it. I'm going back to thieving music online instead of buying it at the ipod store. I'm not buying anymore CDs, I'm going to burn copies from my friends instead. What's next, royalties for ADD radio mentioning celebrities?

Srsly!