[glen]

I read today that the internet radio station service Live 365 has ceased operations.

[gameswizardMember]

Stations via both http://www.live365.com/ & the Live365 android app still work fine at time of posting…

[mbMember]

The combination of no renewal of small webcaster royalty rates and the withdrawal of funding for Live365 have combined to a double blow.
Many are reviewing their options but much to the joy of the radio industry it looks like the majority of stations will cease with no appropriate funding model they can sustain.

Dear Live365 Broadcasters,

You should have already received our notification and link to the press release regarding two issues that have affected Live365 in the last few weeks.

1. The CRB ruling handed down in December, 2015 did NOT renew or address the expiration of the small webcaster percentage of revenue plans. At this time there is no small webcaster options except for full CRB rates.

2. Live365’s long time investors have stopped funding us. As a result, we are no longer able to sustain our service.

We are sad that we are closing our doors at the end of this month. There are always possibilities that we can come back in one form or another, but at this point in time, January 31, 2016 is the last day that Live365’s streaming servers and website will be maintained and supported.

This is a surprise to us as it is to all of you. We are proud that Live365 was a pioneer in the streaming music business and have provided a platform to hundreds of thousands of broadcasters to have a voice over the years.
Unfortunately, we have to say good bye.

[IainJohnston]

Has already been much discussion on the USA radio boards, e.g.
http://www.musicradio77.com/wwwboard/messages/426436.html

Shouldn’t affect UK internet streamers (or e.g. SGGAM) as they pay steeper fees than the old USA ones already and under different royalty/licencing regimes.

Just more greed from already hugely indebted bankrupt “corporate” USA media – and the “airplay royalties” from the “micro-broadcasters” rarely ever reach the actual musicians/producers/writers/composers/engineers by the time the usual suspects have taken their cut first.

[simon_t123Member]

Royalty rates are shocking full stop ! At one point I had four projects on the go … one, an unusual genre was attracting muchos hours from countries other than our own … jolly good I thought ! then the PPL sent a friendly email, you know for the hours I was serving a non-commercial mix of disco, funk & soul if paid at PRS/PPL rates I would be bankrupt many times over it was totally non-sustainable even with zero income doing it all for the lurrrrve … on a serious note I did drill down a spreadsheet on UK royalty rates, and to be honest in my opinon even the small webcaster rates are flawed, a lot of outlay for a service that A) is so pants no one listens, or VERY few listen … you’re ok then for your £400 odd quid split both ways, but any sniff of success as a non commercial small webcaster … and you are royally shafted stepping up the legal way to a more generous licencing tier only makes a bad situation worse, it’s very very expensive … you’d have to run a commercial or subscription model to survive & to add insult to injury reliable playout & streaming cost pennies ! I had planned to serve one of my brands from the USA to circumvent UK royalty rates (the US ones I was happy to pay !) but the PPL in particular had great issue with a service even being receivable in the UK … you’d have to lock the UK out ! not great for monitoring off air there are ways to circumvent rules with low hours relays etc but what’s the point ? To be legit you need an income, the wonderful array of sung ID’s from iJingles were provided on a non-commercial basis … what’s a guy to do in all fairness it should be simplified wherever you are in the world, if you’re making NO money, then really you should pay no, or very little money … truth is I feel that with the shift to online radio in general, which will only intensify when large stations see the savings a la BBC Three of not transmitting the old fashioned way things will only get more expensive for the little guy, I embraced internet radio at the start, processing was spot on with an Optimod digital clone, it was a bright, punchy, listenable brand, jingles, good imaging, news on the hour etc, it could stand up with established terrestrials bigging themselves up online, but there would always be someone that thought hmmm no, we don’t want that, make the little guy pay what we pay so that the little guy has to hang up his headphones … I did the costings, it simply isn’t workable … unless you’re happy to bankroll the entire thing yourself expensively & never plan to go down a commercial / subscription route … there .. my twenty pence worth

[GrahamCollins]

I won’t miss Live 365 – very rarely listened, as Simon says most of it in my experience WAS pants – what’s the point of listening to someone else’s playlist when I could press shuffle on my iPod and play my own, or better still listen to real radio in some way, shape or form – commercial free of course.

I don’t really see why small webcasters should feel they are due any special treatment on rates to broadcast other people’s music. Setting up and operating a personal web-based radio station will never be a money-spinner and should be seen as privilege and paid for like any other serious hobby.

[mbMember]

Graham – no one asked for special treatment – just that when a station has maybe four of five people listening and dropping in over a week to what is essentially a hobby broadcast it is unreasonable to expect professional rates akin to those of broadcasters who can expect thousands if not millions of listeners. Ypou sould like one of those people who rant about the BBC on the Telegraph website

[GrahamCollins]

Didn’t know you read the Telegraph Michael…..

[simon_t123Member]

I’m with MB, and not at all for selfish reason … sure there should be royalties to pay … but in proportion to the broadcaster’s size & income, with Live365 and the US royalties included streaming provider it seems to have recently gotten a whole lot harder if impossible for the little guy … don’t underestimate the genre’s the little guy can come up with, there’s niches to fill in the webcasting market … my pet project was a feelgood music station, spent a lot on behind the scenes & imaging, spent a lot of time creating, marketing & running it as a not for profit entity, but in hindsight it was a genre everyone else does … however, my purely disco, funk & soul project was a success beyond what I ever imagined, I’d hit a niche & it enjoyed some 50 listeners at once (yeah yeah small potatoes) but they were listening sometimes all day (stats tracked) and from alla round the world, incidentally NOT the UK … but it was the UK royalties people that got in touch, I admit I was nieve to what had to be paid in this respect but when I sat & did the sums for that station, enjoying all the hours 50 listeners were racking up, there’s no way on earth I could’ve run that under any form of small webcaster plan in the UK or the USA … so a case in point, of a niche station, hobbyist but imaged & technically delivered to the nines, being popular but thwarted by royalty schemes that are becoming ever slanted away from the small hobby webcaster … Graham, your points are valid but don’t you provide programming for an already well (privately) funded internet radio service ??? unless I am mistaken & then I apologise … when it’s my money I look at it rather differently, there were scales that allowed me to do what I did, but the goal posts were being moved then even, I had to close it down, broke my heart literally … I’ve looked at ways to bring it back, the UK rates were minimum £400ish split two ways but for that when you break the total permitted plays down, any more than say one, two listeners per hour with you playing 10 songs an hour & you’ve had it in no time … the sums don’t work in the webcasters favour … I was going to go via the US & geoblock the UK out, most listeners for said project were in the USA & Latin America … not surprisingly … but just as I was about to go via http://www.streamlicensing.com/came the news as I interpreted it that in the US small non-profit webcaster reduced rates were being pulled … indeed the prices seem a lot higher still cheaper than the UK where even a tiny successful station would almost need a commercial broadcasting royalty package just to cover it’s hours. The next tier up in the UK covers a down-payment on total plays, it’s then when you add it up & hang up your headphones

[GrahamCollins]

Yes Simon, my tastes are very mainstream so haven’t had to look for niche stations – I do get your point and it is a shame that this hike in costs is happening. I was trying to say, clumsily, that what stations pay should be proportionate to the listeners that they declare – nothing more, nothing less. Solid Gold GEM AM is very lucky indeed to have people connected with it that have deep pockets and pay handsomely for keeping it available and legal.

[michiMember]

I did broadcast on Live365 since 1998. I go back to the days when it was free and broadcasters had 100 simultaneous listeners and 100 MB of storage (but at the time, 56K was a big deal). J1, J1XTRA and all of the great jingles have moved to Belgium and is now being hosted by Radionomy.
http://j1fm.tokyo

[mbMember]

I agree with Simon I started C100 in July 2004 – 11 Years 6 months – never off – never hoards of listeners but that wasn’t the point it was a joy to receive the odd email from people who found it and liked it.

[michiMember]

I think the highest J1 ever got was the #46 station on all of Live365 at times during 2015. Not bad for a station that plays Japanese pop music.

[mbMember]

That a pretty good achievement michi

[simon_t123Member]

Nice work Michi ! I remember once a spike of listeners to non-stop:VIBE with all it’s iJingles/TM jingle loveliness after whoever the powers that be are at Sony somehow got it featured as an internet radio channel on the PSP ! I’m sure that’s what it was … it was a while ago now but there was a real spike there … heck at the time a great number of our type of station were the only real users of jingles, all those personal cuts assisting the bank balance of the suppliers at a time when jingles were deemed more out of fashion … I’d say some of us were actually jingle heroes with our not for profit products, and that’s what this site is alllll about, C100 … great jingles … non-stop:VIBE / the groove & whatever else I was running, great jingles … Solid Gold Gem AM … great jingles, there’s space for all but the rates simply MUST be right.

[michiMember]

I just spoke today with a potential AM station client that is playing oldies and I asked him if he had jingles and without getting into too many details, I was able to ascertain that they had some JAM cuts (I wasn’t able to determine which package), as my relationship with this potential client builds, I may be able to get a dub. I recently visited a Low Power FM radio station that was in the process of ordering PAMS cuts from Jon. Like I said to this potential client today, we may have not heard much new from JAM but their bread and butter today is their legacy packages because even though the packages are 30 years old, they still work with today’s radio formats. This station owner did not have many good things to say about “modern” jingles.

I am in the process right now of building back my audience. I lost my presence on iTunes with the Live365 closure. If anything, J1 is still on iTunes but it is pointing to a dead Live365 link. I managed to get most of the J1 channels on TuneIn and I believe Radionomy will add J1 (Hits) on iTunes as we are achieving their minimum 130 TLH per day in order to get taken seriously by them.

Over the holidays, I did purchase one cut from Bespoke during their £99 per cut deal for J1xtra. I may go back to them to get more cuts once I feel good that J1xtra will survive Radionomy’s policies to keep a stream on their service (130 TLH per day at 9 months). Apparently the £99 per cut deal is still on (with a bonus cut if you order 3) but at the same time, I want to get JAM cuts. There’s a few Breakthrough cuts I would like to get for J1. When iJingles was around, I managed to purchase an entire package (Channel 4 Hot AC). I think it was Ignite’s Uckfield FM demo that sold me on this package because it demonstrated how a two note tag would sound with these cuts and that’s what I needed.

Yes, there are fewer of us using jingles, especially on this side of the pond. Like I told this one AM owner today, jingles add that local touch to the station, even if you are using a moniker instead of call letters (e.g. “Mix”, “Kiss”, whatever…). I do engineering studies and FCC studies for broadcast stations, mainly low power community stations but I am still a jingle evangelist. We need more jingles on the air and on the net. I wish Jon would let all of us jinglemadders do a huge group buy and give us a killer rate (something of iJingles proportions)..

But with the JAM personal cuts, LFM, Music Radio Creative and Bespoke that have low or no minimum buys, there’s no excuse why every internet radio station can’t have jingles.

[Author]

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