Internet Radio In The Early Years
Back in the late 1990’s and early years of the new millenium, Internet Radio sprang up as a new broadcasting medium enabled by the rise of the new internet technology and improving bandwidths allowing enthusiasts to set up an internet radio station in their bedrooms, alongside more commercial enterprises setting up big business online music broadcasting. It was not long before the music industries legal eagles woke up to the fact that little if anything was being paid in the way of broadcasting royalties for broadcasting their clients music and the net began to tighten.
Clearly the home broadcasting enthusiasts who were not generating any commercial revenues could not afford to pay these new broadcasting royalties so pretty soon these radio stations started to close down. Additionally there was a fundamentally unfair act of US legislation passed in October 1998. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) decreed that performance royalties should be paid for internet radio broadcasts in addition to publishing royalties, whereas traditional radio broadcasters were only required to pay publishing royalties with no liability to pay performance royalties.
This caused a huge dispute but as usual, the man in the street amatuer radio broadcasters often broadcasting to very small audiences were driven out unless they were prepared to risk huge legal fines and fees. The SpydaRadio site is dedicated to the pioneering spirit of the early years of Internet Radio broadcasting before the moneymen moved in.