US Webcasting Decision To Impact Podcasting?

US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) ignored the International Webcasting Association and other bodies, when on March 2nd it announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (the digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).

The new announced royalty rates would seem to make the Internet radio model unworkable. The rate increases over the coming years but for 2007 they are $0.0011 ($0.0019 in 2010) per track streamed to one user. RaIN (Radio and Internet Newsletter) have worked out that for one month this would cost the AOL radio network $1.65m. This could kill Pandora (based in the U.S.) and make Last FM the only choice for social networking radio.