New streaming station, Seattle area

Based on several years work with a local radio station, I developed a from-scratch streaming radio station: music library, scheduling,
account handling, streaming player, reporting. It's radiovashon.com, with some technical details on blog.radiovashon.com

Music licensing was, of course, irritating. Sound Exchange has minimum payments, and since they don't prorate over the calendar
year, you really will do better to start near January. SESAC offers me about 1% of my rotation, but it's looking like they'll take 30%
of the BMI/ASCAP/SESAC revenue (but they have Adele, Dylan, and alt-J, so I'm gritting my teeth for now).

Royalties are, of course, worrying. Not only the ~6% SoundEx jump and the ~40% proposed BMI/ASCAP/SESAC jump.
But has anybody noticed that modern music is heading from a median 3.5 minute duration to more like 2.5? With SoundEx's
per-spin charges, that's _another_ 40% jump. I'm even noticing quite a bit of rap in the sub-2 range (not an issue for my
format, but a hint of things to come). I have started using track duration as a consideration when picking new music; the
shorter a track is, the better it has to be.

I know I'm an outlying data point in being both a music programmer as well as a full-stack software developer. Still hoping to hear
from others who are looking at new ways to apply Internet technologies to the ancient and honorable task of providing
a music entertainment service.

And on the statutory front, I know it currently feels like the government is working hard to exclude all but the biggest media
companies. But over time political winds do tend to shift, and I'd like to stay in touch with others so that we can tell a
compelling "little guy" story when the time is right.

Regards,
Andy Valencia

Radio Vashon said:

But has anybody noticed that modern music is heading from a median 3.5 minute duration to more like 2.5? With SoundEx's
per-spin charges, that's _another_ 40% jump.

Click to expand...

Interesting observation, and I don't know if it applies to all formats. I also don't know if it's intentional on the part of music creators to make songs shorter, and at the same time release more songs (how many Ariana Grande songs are there in the Top 40 now?). It certainly does increase the payment, since the royalty is a per song payment, not based on length. I'll bring that up next time I speak with reps. I know in my most recent conversations, they've had to make adjustments as we move from an album-based to a singles-based system. That is more like music was 50 years ago, and at that time, songs typically were shorter.

Congratulations and best wishes! Where do you get the content from (mp3 etc or APIs to access that online)? Do you know if ASCAP provides the content? Thank you for your time.

I buy the tracks (typically, CD). Rip to flac, then trans-code, currently to 48k mp3 ABR. I've found low bit rate mp3's benefit from a CD-quality starting point.

ASCAP provide content? No. They take (money). All they give is the hope that they won't sue you. YMMV (probably not).

Always got the impression (rooted in the way the reps acted) that the monthly fee the music licensing agencies demand is akin to the 'insurance' money paid by businesses so that nothing bad happened to their business. Every rep I've ever dealt with over the years seemed to have a strong arm approach. I'm simply talking their 'style', not that the rates are not justified although that can really seem arbitrary.