It isn't just Last.FM that fears for the future…

As an IP developer, I’ve acquired several domains. Many of them are based around an online multimedia experience, from audio to video, to text, and of course everything merged together. SMASHorTRASH.com is just one domain with a project wrapped around it. I’ve researched and launched online media projects and attempted to utilize services that perform all of the licensing for me.

To sum up all of what is going on; Online radio, and anything that requires interacting with large, incumbent, and highly litigious organizations requires an equally large organization. In effect, it takes online radio out of the independant broadcasters arena. At least legally. Pirate radio broadcasters could probably still run, until they run across the sniffers of the licensing boards and their investigators.

I think the licensing and fee requirements for broadcasting is fine as a policy, but make it a much less expensive option. Anyone who has ever listened to any internet broadcast realizes that the quality takes a huge hit in the American internet experience with bandwidth issues. Listening to music becomes dramatically more passive unless you are seeking out a specific song, or looking to make comment on a song, lyric, or band.

The article on the Guardian.co.uk website called “Last.fm chief fears for future of online radio” discusses exactly these points. But I don’t think it adequately discounts that listeners online, when quantified as 25 million monthly users in regards to last.fm, tend to be passive, distracted, or not even present while the stream takes place, yet the service is charged per stream. At least, broadcasters were charged like that when I was last researching the project.

I’ll come back to this when I do some due diligence. A quick update, according to the document I read some 3 or 4 years ago, I remember the rate increasing year over year, upwards of 40% each year. I’m not sure if that stuck, so, like I said… back to due diligence.