Sound Exchange:
Targeting of Internet Broadcasters
Because there were many Internet broadcasters who were playing commercially licensed music without paying the liscense fees, Congress allowed the Library of Congress to come up with some way to remedy the situation. To make a long story short, Sound Exchange was the answer.
Sound Exchange is specifically in existence to extract fees from Internet broadcasters who play licensed music. That may seem fair, however, those fees are outrageously exhorbitant. An Internet broadcaster, according to one Internet streaming service CEO, with 500 listeners for 1 hour per day of music would pay in the neighborhood of $72,290 per year. Hardly any Internet broadcasters in existence can afford to pay a fee like that. Most do not even bring in enough money to pay the bills for broadcasting. They do it because they love it, and they pay for it from their own pockets.
When these regulations were enacted, they were made retroactive to January 1, 2006. They still are. Even though Sound Exchange has not begun collecting the fees as yet, they are retroactive to that date. When they begin extraction of these fees, with force of law, a very large percentage of Internet broadcasters will be forced out of business.
Of course, when this happens, a very large outlet for unsigned artists will collapse. All that will be left in Internet broadcasting will be the "big boys". They play the big labels and the known stars. The unsigned artists will be left with very few outlets for air play.
For that reason, Darkmoon Enterprises will play absolutely no music that is licensed unless the artists have retained their performance/broadcast rights in the licensing. When an artist sends music to us, the artist must warrant that he/she owns the performance/broadcast rights, and grants Darkmoon Enterprises the rights to broadcast the music royalty free.
We want artists to get paid. That is why we play their music. When we play the artist's music, we are exposing it to our audience. If the audience likes the music and purchases the CD, we have, in effect, made a sale for the artist. Under the government's plan, we have to pay for the privilege of doing the work of selling. That happens in no other industry on Earth. We are glad to give the artist exposure to the audience, and we sincerely hope this creates sales for the artist. We do not think it is right for us to have to pay for the privilege of making the sale. That is why we require a royalty free agreement from the artists we play.
All that said we are liscensed but alot of the music we focus on is from unsigned bands. But we would still love to play the Big Time metal bands out there. So please dont let this discourge you from sending in your music to us.