It was just coming up on the two year anniversary with my playlist on Live365, but they dropped some bad news last month. A ruling by the US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) effectively pulled the rug out from under the entire Live365 business model of online broadcasting. As the note from the Live365 team describes it, the result is there are now “no small webcaster options except for full CRB rates.” On top of that their investors have backed out, so the misfortune was sudden and severe.

At least one of the broadcasters I followed (DKFM) is already jumping across to radionomy.com, but it sounds like that’s not an option for a “for fun” station like mine since there is a hefty minimum of listener hours to maintain. I have had a lot of fun sharing my little amateur mix-tape with the world and I have immensely enjoyed other stations (that led to many purchases, I should point out). I understand this ruling is good for the music industry and making the online streaming market more robust, but the personal satisfaction of having a mini radio station got CRB’ed. Back to making physical mix-tapes.