around the world. It would even
help artists earn more money
from royalties. And that may be
why the record industry doesn’t
want to see online radio succeed. It never has.
The playing field has never
been equal, since internet radio
stations have had restrictions
imposed on them that were not
applied to terrestrial or satellite radio stations. While terrestrial radio and satellite can play
a complete album or an entire
weekend of songs by a particular artist, online radio is limited
to just three songs by one album
or four songs by an artist in a
three hour period.
You have always had the ability
to call up your local radio station and request a song, sometimes even hearing it played as
the next song. Online radio stations must wait a full hour before
playing requests — even though
software could play the requests
NewJerseyStage.com
instantly.
Websites like Spotify exist because you can instantly choose
the artist and s ong you want to
hear. Internet radio stations are
not only forbidden from letting
users do something like that,
they cannot even announce
what time a song will be played.
All of these rules have essentially prevented the growth of
online radio. The rules have also
hurt independent artists. Many
online radio stations would have
loved to offer special shows featuring the work of a single independent artist. Such shows
would have provided wonderful promotion for artists. It’s not
that online radio stations didn’t
see the value in programs like
that, they weren’t allowed to create programs like that.
In the end, everything comes
back to the classic line: follow
the money. So let’s take a look
at how terrestrial radio would
2016 - ISSUE 1
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