Hi there and happy summer!
Acoustic Pie Radio is 8 years old this weekend! Most of you know the outline of the story. In 2002, I’d only recently discovered and fallen in love with Internet radio when, suddenly, my favorite Internet stations started shutting down. It was the royalties scare of 2002. Internet broadcasters were terrified of new royalty rules about to be enacted which were written to be retroactive to 1998 and destined to cost even non-profit and hobby broadcasters thousands of dollars.
So I decided to start my own radio stream. Partly because I refused to believe that such an egregious thing was going to happen. Partly because, as a newcomer to the field, I wouldn’t have to worry about liability for any retroactive fees. But I decided to post my stream with Live365 so as to have a sizable, profit-driven, politically proactive entity in between me and the unfathomable Copyright Panel rulings, now the equally unfathomable Copyright Royalty Board. Even now, eight years later this issue still isn’t resolved. “Temporary” rates were negotiated with the record companies that year and then renegotiated in 2007 as the board continues to issue rulings which require Internet radio to pay some types of royalties which aren’t even required of traditional radio stations and exponentially higher rates for other fees.
Acoustic Pie Radio began streaming on July 17, 2002 with four hours of songs. It cost $4.95/month to run and when the new temporary royalties were negotiated, that was an additional $5/month. Nowadays, Acoustic Pie streams 36 hours of music at twice the original bitrate. If you have a hankering to run your own stream, Live365 still offers a “Personal Introduction” broadcast package for $5.95/month which gives you a 7 hour stream and up to three free listeners at a time. There’s no limit on the number of subscribing listeners. It’s a lot of fun. Seriously!
New stuff on the website!
Chris Pureka is the featured artist on the website right now. She’s wonderful. Please buy her music :) Don’t forget that all past featured artists can be found in the archives! These are all musicians whose songs I truly love.
Also new this month is a page offering free MP3s from favorite artists who are generously sharing their songs with Acoustic Pie fans. Surf by the new Pie Samples page and download some songs.
Happy Anniversary to Acoustic Pie!
Thanks for reading and thanks for listening to the Pie, everyone!
~Kelley
AcousticPie.com
The Acoustic Pie Blog 