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SITE OF THE WEEK

Years later, this is still our favorite radio station online. Smooth music emanating from the back room of the Eliot Drugstore, 24/7. Click on late and night and relax. It;s like a drug.

VISIT the NIGHT TUNES web site

Hard to believe it's been two years since we first clicked in to the Seacoast's smallest radio station, broadcasting from the back room of Eliot Drug in sleepy little Eliot, Maine. NightTunes.com is still on the air, or more accurately "on the wire", since it can be heard only via the Web. Station owner and pharmacist George Kloda prescribes an eclectic 20-minute cocktail of soothing sounds daily. Listeners tune in at their leisure. It's all very relaxing, the antipodes of Imus and Howard Stern shock talk, country crap, hard rock and gangster rap that has somehow become mainstream commercial radio.

But while all is mellow at Night Tunes, like Dorothy's house in Oz, the tiny station is being carried aloft by a tornado of legal controversy. All 45,000 Internet radio stations are wondering which way the winds of change will blow. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants Internet stations to pay musicians .004 cents per listener per song. In association with the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), the thinking goes, webcasters should pay a user fee just like companies trading digital music on the Web are now required to do. The whole matter ended up in a Congressional Oversight Committee, whatever that is, and is being arbitrated by the Library of Congress.

The RIAA proposal that had Internet broadcasters buzzing was temporarily shot down by the feds this week, but webcasters fear it won't go away -- and may eventually kill many members of this newborn industry. That may be sad, or it may just be Darwinism in action.

"People representing the record industry that got burned by the Napster fiasco are trying to tag a vulnerable market," Kloda says. "They've found an untapped revenue source."

Even in a world of midgets, Night Tunes remains small, but no less appealing to its niche listeners. Many Internet radio stations are also radio stations in the real world. You can listen via radio, if you are within a station's broadcast range, or via the Web if you are anywhere else. Broadband and the amazing Internet now allow one-person stations like Night Tunes, to compete with giant radio corporations, reaching an unlimited audience. So RIAA wants the little stations to pay musicians for the use of their music. That seems odd to some people, since big broadcast radio stations in this country do not pay. The theory has always been that stations play music which then attracts listeners -- who buy albums and tapes and CD recordings and go to live concerts. The stations are effectively promoting the musicians. In fact, in the old payola days, record companies used to bribe deejays to get their musicians heard on the air.

THE WEB SITE MAKER

But the Web now makes it almost too easy to become a broadcaster. No need for a costly license, no FCC regulations, no staff, no antenna. George Kloda selects about 20 new cuts of music each week, stuff he personally likes that fits his mellow format. He condenses and organizes the cuts into RM files, a compressed, but still very large WAV file using a sound organizing software called Cool Edits. Each day his computer, the heart of Night Tunes, picks four of five cuts from this group and mixes them with audio clips of George or his wife saying things like, "Thanks for listening to Night Tunes, and don’t forget to visit our sponsors." Listeners cannot copy the files, and can listen as long as they like. So far, Kloda has selected and prepared over 350 of his favorite cuts for Internet audiences.

Like most Web sites, NightTunes.com is a labor of love. Nobody is getting rich in this game, and most sites barely cover operational costs and hosting fees. Kloda already pays fees to BMI and ASCAP, the people who collect royalties for the music composers and song writers, a total of about $800 a year for Night Tunes. Even the smallest webcasters are required to keep logs of the number of listeners, the songs played, the hours they were aired, the names of the artists. It's a lot of paperwork. RIAA simply wants the same stations to pay an additional fee to the musicians who performed the cuts that are broadcast online.

According to reports I've read online, webcasters are willing to pay a stock fee or a percent of profits to RIAA. But the consensus is that assessing a flat royalty fee per song is just too much. One webcaster calculates that amounts to roughly two cents per user per hour, a rate that far exceeds the income of most Internet stations.

Webcaster's object less to the performer's royalties, Kloda confirms, than to than the RIAA pay-per-play assessment plan and to the rate itself. The eclectic programming and small audience at Night Tunes, makes this station less vulnerable, but Kloda says, the RIAA concept would hit small enterprising webcasters hard, not to mention that they are being held to a double-standard, since regular broadcasters don't pay the fee at all. RIAA has proposed that those on-air stations that also stream onto the Internet should pay half of the fee they propose for Web-only stations. In other words, the people already making the most money, should pay less. Go figure.

"For me, it's really a kind of non-issue," Kloda says.. "But I hate to see anyone who’s bigger than me, and who is actually making money, get it taken away by legislative fiat. The figures that they're bandying about are just astronomical."

Small hobby stations, that play very specific kinds of music for the love of it, could be nickeled and dimed out of existence, which ultimately hurts the small and local musicians whom they often play -- because larger radio stations don't. Many musicians, who would seemingly profit from the RIAA proposal, don't like it either for that very reason. Only the tiniest percentage of musicians ever make it to the mainstream airwaves. Internet radio that plays alternative and local music has helped lesser-known artists build more fans. Now that evolving synergy is being threatened. But a RIAA spokesperson on National Public Radio said recently, in essence, that radio stations are a business, not a hobby; those who cannot pay the fees should close down, or petition RIAA for a lower rate on a case-by-case basis. If the fleas won’t pay, RIAA appears to be saying, we’ll exterminate them. But fleas are tough to kill.

THE UP SHOT

What scares record industry moguls about the Internet is the same thing that attracts them to it like moths to a porch light -- it's the numbers. Arbitron, the people who keep the radio stats, tell us that 9% of radio listeners tuned in via the Web last week. That's a huge percentage, considering the industry didn't exist five years ago.

Despite all the traditional media baloney about the dangers of the Web and the demise of the dot-com era, the Internet is growing daily as it alters the way Americans live. I can listen to Night Tunes while writing, then switch to the BBC or a small station in Scotland, catch an archived talk show on NH Public Radio, then catch CNN and a Cajan mix with few commercials and without enduring even a blip of the garbage or bad reception on my "real" radio that lately has been getting more use as a doorstop.

Nobody wants to rip off musicians who provide so much pleasure. How much of the RIAA money actually reaches the musicians I want to support is another issue altogether. For the moment the controversy rages on, proving that the Internet is as powerful as ever, not because it's run by a central agency, but because it isn't. Don’t look now, but fewer large companies are taking over radio, television and newspapers. There may be more channels, but they’re owned by the same people – except online. AOL is massive, but it’s linking you to millions of independent-thinking "broadcasters" like George Kloda. Kloda continues to pump out his personal vision of the way the world should sound, and I keep Night Tunes in my radio mix.

"Having been a small businessman," Kloda says, "I'm used to getting rabbit punched constantly. This (RIAA) thing just came out of left field. If it passes, and they fine me, I just won't pay. I've taken the position that I'll work until they drag me off in chains."

A man who will fight to the end for his right to play mellow tunes. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Internet is all about.