I've run a small online station for several years, it's a niche genre that will never attract mainstream attention. It runs free of advertisements, it is known in it's music community and has bands from all over the world sending in their albums (both digital and mailing in physical goods).
The bands want the attention and exposure, I have never had a band or label ask to have their music removed. When a band sends me an album, I play a song, they go right to their facebook and say -how cool, this station just played our song, go check them out - Many bands are true garage and basement bands, their music is not registered with any music licensing company. They are not on pandora or any other big name streaming service. Also, some artists are outside the US and some bands / artists are no longer together or even alive, with music on the station going back 50 years.
Therefor I have never paid licensing fees, first they are not reasonable. My station basically has no income and runs at a loss each month. A few listeners have asked to send in donations, but that still does not cover one month's expenses. Paying hundreds of dollars of licensing fees per month is not an option. I could full my stream with ads, but that would ruin it. Second, I believe many of the artists are not registered with these US music licensing companies, so they would not receive any of the money owed to them anyway.
And maybe 50% of my total listeners are outside the US, I am actually suppose to be paying each countries local licensing groups for songs played in their country. Playing into 30+ countries per month this is not realistic, the solution would be to block my stream from other countries, but that is stupid. But it is actually fairly difficult for a foreign business to collect money from someone in another country, so I'm not worried about that.
My questions: Has anyone else ran unlicensed, if so were they ever 'caught' and what were they told. Something like start paying or shut down, and what was your response ?
Then, since these laws only apply to US broadcasters, if someone moved to a full virtual dj overseas, to a country with no similar licensing restrictions, would they then be free to broadcast unhindered ?
The bands want the attention and exposure, I have never had a band or label ask to have their music removed. When a band sends me an album, I play a song, they go right to their facebook and say -how cool, this station just played our song, go check them out - Many bands are true garage and basement bands, their music is not registered with any music licensing company. They are not on pandora or any other big name streaming service. Also, some artists are outside the US and some bands / artists are no longer together or even alive, with music on the station going back 50 years.
Therefor I have never paid licensing fees, first they are not reasonable. My station basically has no income and runs at a loss each month. A few listeners have asked to send in donations, but that still does not cover one month's expenses. Paying hundreds of dollars of licensing fees per month is not an option. I could full my stream with ads, but that would ruin it. Second, I believe many of the artists are not registered with these US music licensing companies, so they would not receive any of the money owed to them anyway.
And maybe 50% of my total listeners are outside the US, I am actually suppose to be paying each countries local licensing groups for songs played in their country. Playing into 30+ countries per month this is not realistic, the solution would be to block my stream from other countries, but that is stupid. But it is actually fairly difficult for a foreign business to collect money from someone in another country, so I'm not worried about that.
My questions: Has anyone else ran unlicensed, if so were they ever 'caught' and what were they told. Something like start paying or shut down, and what was your response ?
Then, since these laws only apply to US broadcasters, if someone moved to a full virtual dj overseas, to a country with no similar licensing restrictions, would they then be free to broadcast unhindered ?
