Music Surfing

GF asked about HD Radio the other day. I had not paid attention to it because I'm not accustomed to listening to music on the radio, iPod, CD, or bandstand. It simply never occurs to me to listen, except in the car. But Houston radio stations are, shall we say, not the best.

Anyway, I discovered that HD radio in Houston is scarce, but KUHF (NPR) and KODA broadcast in HD and KODA HD is all jazz, all the time; that's what she wanted to hear.

A quick check of the Internet told me that HD radio receivers were also scarce - and often expensive. The majority seemed to be replacements for car stereos. So I went to the KODA web site and discovered they stream "HD radio" over the Internet. Several tweeks to Firefox later, I was streaming jazz into my Sony sound system. Not bad. GF will be happy, now.

But I didn't care for the KODA DJ and her choice of music, so I surfed the web (imagine that!) and found a plethora of streaming jazz stations. San Diego City College's Jazz88 immediately became my favorite. Amazing. All it takes is high-speed Internet, some free software, a little browser tweaking, and a reasonably good sound system. I may listen to music while web surfing in the future. If it occurs to me.

What does occur to me is that if everyone switched from listening to the radio to listening to streaming music, it would require a lot of Internet band width, not to mention what it takes to watch a music video over the Internet. And with the forthcoming improvements in wireless, you could easily have music all over the house for a relatively minor investment in suitably equipped speakers.

Record labels and the RIAA have been worried about loss of revenue for years. In 2007, Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) of the Library of Congress created a new royalty structure - with rates going from the then current flat rate of $0.0007 per online performance to annually escalating rates increasing to $0.0019 per performance by 2010. But that created a huge burden on amateurs and others who made no money through streaming. More recently, music publishers have agreed that providers of such services can pay a mechanical royalty of 10.5% of revenue after other royalties are calculated. This agreement does not cover merchandise or permanent downloads. A ruling on this proposal by Copyright Royalty Judges is expected by Oct 2, 2008.

The Web never ceases to amaze.