Invisible and unstoppable

Welcome to the U-S of A. Home of the brave. Land of the...not very free to listen to internet radio. A new, unfairly skewed fee structure for song copyrights set to go into effect on May 15th could force many internet radio stations to fold due to the high cost of royalties (read the Newsweek article). I listen to internet radio. I don't like the idea of not having the option of streaming commercial free music. Why? The answer is simple. Because main-stream or "commercial" radio is heavy on advertisement and light on content. There are local stations - one top 40 station in particular (that shall remain nameless here) - that don't even play a single minute of music during the morning commute time slot...and I would rather have a frontal lobotamy performed by a blind monkey with palsy than listen to someone whose ego has swelled to the point that their head is big enough to have a gravitational pull that affects local coastal tides. When they do actually play music, they play the same songs in heavy rotation with large blocks of advertisements and pointless host or dj chatter. And the three most insidious words in the recording industry: pay for play. I'm convinced that one of the ClearChannel stations here is being compensated for playing the abomination that is the Brook Hogan/Pall Wall single. I'd like to be able to have enough faith in humanity to think that NO ONE actually wants to hear that bit of over-produced schlock even once. Let alone five or six times in a day.

There's a petition at SaveNetRadio.org, and Pandora has been posting updates on the site blog. I whole heartedly am in favor of artists getting their due, and if that means increasing royalty fees, then fine. But lets make it applicable to all types of media. That way, it doesn't look like the RIAA, record labels and corporate behemoths such as ClearChannel aren't back-handedly putting the squeeze on internet-only content providers.

Since I'm feeling a little anti-establishment at the moment, I think this would be a very opportune time to post a few MP3s, seeing as I haven't done that for a while. The first song is one of my current favorites - the movie hasn't even hit theaters, and parts of the soundtrack are already circulating. The power of the internet. Its awesome!

• Snow Patrol - Signal Fire (from the upcoming Spider-Man 3 soundtrack - you can listen to the whole album here and check out the bands MySpace profile)


• Snow Patrol - Somewhere a Clock is Ticking


• M. Ward - Here Comes the Sun Again(From the Cadillac commercial that I keep seeing - here's his MySpace profile for more songs)


• Handsome Furs - What We Had

(UPDATE: The file links have been disabled.)