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News Tue Apr 17 2007
New Radio From The Hype Machine Already Imperiled By Higher Royalty Rates
If you're reading this you probably already know about The Hype Machine and Elbo.ws, the two competing mp3 blog aggregators of note. What they do is gather all the posts made by all the significant mp3 blogs in one place; you can read abbreviated posts, download mp3's and check the mp3 blog charts. Now on Hype Machine you can also tune into the best new radio stream on the net. Hype Radio works by streaming tracks posted over the last two weeks by the top blogs. You can now sit at your desk and very passively absorb all the great music being written about on the blogosphere. If you want to read the original post where the song came from that's easy too.
Unfortunately for us (and Hype) this may be a shortlived service as yesterday news came down the pike that the Copywrite Royalty Board upheld it's earlier decision to essentially double the rates streaming services have to pay. Sites last Last.FM, Pandora and popular online radio stations like Live 365 and Accuradio will have to shut down. According to Brendon Silver of Accuradio this could put a serious damper on many struggling Web 2.0 companies and result in a "virtual shutdown of all U.S. webcasting." If you want to get involved in some way to try to change this policy visit this link for more info.
