Christmas Music 24/7

I get a daily report of how many listeners and how they long they listen to each station. Thursday, October 11th, 2007, was the first date for the 2007 Christmas season that the Traditional Christmas radio station had over 1,000 hours of listeners. That was from 1,267 different listeners throughout the day.

I’ve added two songs from Keith McCoy to the Traditional station, and to the Country Station. The songs are “When Santa Visits Here” and “Here on Christmas Eve.” More information can be found at www.myspace.com/ceoband and AstraRecordLabel.com.

I have been sick the last ten days or so. I have received a giant stack of CDs, I’ve started going through them and adding the music to the appropriate station(s). So, be looking (and listening) for new music fairly shortly. Thanks for your patience.

Leslie Harpold ran for 6 years an online Advent Calendar. Unfortunately she passed away last December after only publishing a few days of the 2006 Advent Calendar. I am planning on continuing the tradition here. I know I’m not as arty as she was, but I love Christmas, and counting down the days to Christmas is wonderful. There are only 90 days until Christmas this year!

The Advent calendar is on the upper right of each page at Christmas Music 24/7. Each day in December I’ll be releasing something. Feel free to send your ideas, suggestions, and memories to me.

Back in August I was interviewed by the local Fox affiliate, Fox-5 in Washington DC. I just found the report on their web site: Future Uncertain for Internet Radio.

Ok, here’s the deal. I’ve just completed a redesign of the Christmas Music 24/7 web site. The image on the top header now (the packages under the tree) is one I took for Christmas 2004. I’d like something new. Go through your photos of past Christmas celebrations, preparations, church gatherings and cantatas, concerts, and family gatherings. Send a few photos to me. I’m looking for photos that:

• Show the fun spirit of Christmas
• Somehow tie into music if possible (instruments? a choir? carolers?)

Technical details I’m looking for:

• Need to be at least 1024 pixels wide
• The copyright needs to be owned by you, and you can assign that copyright to me so I can use the photo on the web site, business cards, t-shirts, bumper stickers, kitchen sink, etc…. A Creative Commons license is great, as long as the image can be used for commercial purposes.

Simply email the photo to me (photo-contest -at- christmasmusic247.com). Or post the photos to Zooomr or Flickr. Tag the photo with christmasmusic247 so I can find it. Photos should be submitted by October 28th, so I can have the new photos on the site by November 1st.

Winners will have their photos featured on the Christmas Music 24/7 web site for the 2007 Christmas season. And maybe I can send them a CD or two, we’ll see what happens as we get closer to Halloween.

Wil Wheaton, author, voiceover actor, actor, wrote today in RIAA, through SoundExchange, is lying to webcasters about Sound Exchange issuing a press release that 24 webcasters took them up on their deal. It’s a good article, with lots of good links.

Here’s an update on the status of performance royalties and licensing of the music that I play on stations in the Christmas Music 24/7 network. Sound Exchange offered me (and a handful of other small commercial webcasters) a contract that would allow me to pay the old rates for the music that I play. The catch is that the contract only covers the labels that have agreed to allow Sound Exchange to represent them. Sound Exchange sent me the list of labels, and it amounted to over 7,000 different label names. I compared that with the music I play, and discovered about half of the music I play comes from labels that are not covered. Almost all of the non-covered music is from smaller, independent labels; although a handful are from labels that have gone out of business.

For any music that I play that is not from a Sound Exchange member label, I have to pay the high, Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) rate, based on a “per-performance basis.” Per performance is for every time I play a song, I pay for each listener of that song. For example, if I played all of the songs from a CD in the 2006 Christmas season, I will owe approximately $125 for that CD. That money is sent to Sound Exchange, where they keep 5% for their overhead; then the remainder is divided between the label and the artist. If Sound Exchange can’t find the label or artist, Sound Exchange gets to keep the money they have collected.

The labels that have gone out of business I have to pay the high CRB rates for the privilege of sharing the music, even though Sound Exchange probably won’t find anyone to send the money to.

If you are an independent artist, you have three options:

1. Do nothing, I end up paying a lot of money for playing your music from January 2006 through September 2007, and I probably shut down my stations at the end of 2007. I have already removed most independent labels from my playlists. You get no more promotion from Christmas Music 24/7.
2. Give me written permission to play your music without paying the high performance royalty tax. This is called a direct license. I have a short form that you fill out, and then return to me. Once I have your signed form, I will play your music on as many of my stations as I can to give you the greatest amount of exposure i can.
3. Become a member of Sound Exchange, and allow them to negotiate on your behalf. This would put your music under the umbrella and I do not have to pay any extra money for playing your music. You will receive a small amount of money from the Internet radio stations that play your stations, and that money will continue on into the future.

I would greatly prefer that independent artists take the second or third option. If you’d like to take the second option (”direct license”) all you need to do is download the direct license form [PDF - requires Acrobat], and mail it back to me. Email me that you’ve signed the form, and I’ll add your music back to my playlists immediately. I’ll also link to your website, as well as attempt to make it as easy as possible for people to find out about you and your music.

If you have any questions or concerns about this, please let me know.

More information

• New Royalty Ruling Leaves the Future of Internet Radio in Doubt, March 10, 2007
• Good News and Bad News, March 13, 2007
• Christmas Music 24/7 in the Los Angeles Times: Web DJs silenced by royalty fees, July 12, 2007
• Christmas Music 24/7 in the Washington Post: Shaken Internet Radio Stations Face Specter of New Fees Sunday, July 13, 2007
• Christmas Music 24/7 interviewed by Fox-5 TV in Washington DC

I have started receiving new music for the 2007 Christmas season. I’ll be adding it to the stations shortly, and hopefully do some interviews for the Christmas Musician podcast. I’ll let you know as I add the songs to the stations.

I am very happy to announce that the fourth station in the Christmas Music 24/7 network has been launched. This station is Christmas Music 24/7: CCM (which is Contemporary Christian Music). This station will be webcasting Christmas music in the CCM genre. Artists include Point of Grace, Acappella, Bryan Duncan, and many others. My collection does not have too many different artists currently, so please let me know who’d you like me to add.

The first song? Bryan Duncan’s The First Noel from Christmas is Jesus. I simply love Bryan Duncan’s music. One of my all-time favorite songs is Whistlin’ in the Dark. I am so excited to launch this station with Bryan.