Dear Listeners,

As many of you will now, theres a huge fight going on to save Internet Radio from going under. The Copyright Royalty Board has hiked up royalty rates to unbelievable rates, which will put many broadcasters out of business, and in some cases bankrupt them as the rates are being made retrospective.

There is a lifeline being thrown out to us though in the form of the Radio Equality act, but it is important that you get your Congressman to support this act and co-sponsor it, as without enough support it will not come into effect, and Internet Radio will go under and stations such as this one will be gone forever. See www.savenetradio.org for more information on this.

As part of the campaign against the royalty rates, there is to be an International Day of Silence on 26th July 2007. We here at IntenseRadio.co.uk fully support this, and as such will be taking part in it.

So, if you tune in on the 26th July you will not be greeted by the slamming beats of DMS, Harmonic and myself, but instead you will be taken to a message telling you what you can do to help save net radio.

This Day of Silence is happening around the world, and you will struggle to find a station that s not silent on this day. This is what it will be like if the Radio Equality Act does not come into force - please contact your local Congress Men and bring this act in to save Net Radio.

Many Thanks,

Underloop

I've just heard word from DJ Hoekzema that he is now a Daddy! A bouncing baby boy called Niels (apparently its Swedish!). Many congrats to the both of you. Lack of sleep is the order of the day for the next few months! Good job Frank! We want pictures asap thankyouplease

After we went off the air, our chart position dropped back down to pretty much the very bottom of the Live365 charts (its based on airplay) in all genres. This meant we were getting less exposure to new listeners as it was harder to find us. Well, thanks to many dedicated listeners over the past month we have climbed back up the charts, and are now in the top 15 (which means front page) in all our genres:

Techno: No 15
Hard House: No 10
Drum n Bass: No 11

And if you do a search for Hardcore within Live365, we are still the No. 1 Hardcore music radio station!!!!!

A huge thank you to all the listeners both old and new who are supporting the station. It is because of you that we are still on the air. Cheers all!

The following has just been announced from Live365 following the recent royalty rate hike from the CRB.

bluemonty l:

Though we are appealing the new rates, the outcome of an appeal will take some time. In the meantime, the new rates go into effect immediately, therefore Live365 must pay higher rates beginning March 5th. These new rates have forced us to make some changes to business policy regarding listening from the Live365 website in an effort to minimize royalties and help keep down the cost of broadcasting. These changes include: - VIP "Are you still there?" campaign: All VIPs will receive an "Are you still there?" prompt after 8 hours that they will then need to click or the broadcast will stop. - Non-VIP "Are you still there?" campaign: We'll also be testing different maximum listening session lengths and reminders on some non-VIP listeners. For more info, visit www.live365.com/broadcasterchoice

The reason behind this is to ensure that there is a listener actually listening to the stream, otherwise we are paying royalties where its not necessary. Feel free to discuss this change if you agree or not.

As some of you may have already heard, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has decided to adopt the new per performance royalty rates put forth by SoundExchange. These will be applied retrospectively to 2006. The royalty rates are as follows:

2006: $0.0008
2007: $0.0011
2008: $0.0014
2009: $0.0018
2010: $0.0019

This equates to an increase over the existing rate ($0.000762) of 5%, 44%, 84%, 136%, and 149% respectively. This WILL take the majority of internet radio stations in the US off the air. Add to this a $500 minimum fee per channel per year, and there goes the twist of the knife.

Live365 (who supply bandwidth for IntenseRadio.co.uk) have many thousands of stations broadcasting through them, and are the largest radio network in the world. They allow small, independent stations to broadcast without having to take out a second mortgage. The price hike will add an extra $5m per year purely on the minimum fee per channel. Unless something is done to stop these new rates coming in then Live365 will have no choice but to raise it's fees. Either way, this will take many of (to my mind) the greatest radio stations off the air. Gone will be the variety and eclecticism of the current internet radio community, and all that will be left will be mind-numbing commercial tripe aimed at getting as many listeners as possible so that they can sell advertising to pay their royalty bill.

The good news is that the Digital Media Association (DiMA) is filing for a motion for rehearing with the CRB. The DiMA consists of many big-hitters, including Live365, Yahoo!, AOL, MTV, Pandora, and Real. The motion will be submitted on Monday, March 19th.

In the meantime, what can you do? Well, first off, if you live in the States, please email, call and write to your Congressional Representative / Senator stating that you don't support the current rate decision (see http://www.savenetradio.org for a sample letter). Secondly, you can sign a petition http://www.petitiononline.com/SIR2007r/petition.html . The RIAA has run roughshod over minority music for some time, but the fact is that we DO have a voice, and we should be using it to shout our frustrations as loudly as we can.

I will personally be doing everything I can to fight this decision, and gain as much support as I can from within the industry. Please feel free to contact us here at the station with any questions, suggestions or just support. Every little bit helps. I refuse to let the music I listen to be censored in this way.

Thanks.

Underloop and the IntenseRadio.co.uk Staff

After a long struggle with the server, we are now back up on the air broadcasting from a brand new server! I'll be monitoring things to see how we go on, and theres a chance we may move servers again as I have noticed we are eating up a fair bit of resources on the current one.

As for the downtime, I want to apologise to all our listeners who have been unable to tune in for this past month. I'd also like to thank you for your patience.

Underloop

PS apparently a large pic of DMS on the front page will make your experience more enjoyable, so here you go - now doesn't that feel better!:

Apologies for the downtime today ladies and gentlemen. Google has very kindly been indexing the moo out of the site, and as a result of this decided to munch up a few GB of bandwidth, which took us over the limit.

I've upped the limit to 5 times what it was - hopefully this will be enough for a short time at least!!!

Its looking like the server issues we are seeing are due to a hardware problem. A new server is being brought online and all the data being transferred onto it. This will hopefully be up and running as soon as possible.

Once again, apologies for the downtime, and I'll update this as and when I find out more.

*update* The server is up but to say its not running at optimal conditions would be an understatement. We are cheduled to be transferred to a new server on Monday evening EST. Hopefully this will all go to plan and we will be back up and running early next week!

Our main server which feeds Live365 has been down most of the day, and hence the radio stream has not been working.

The data centre in which it is hosted is having a few technical issues, but they are working hard to restore it. It is logged as an emergency priority.

Apologies for the interruption, and thank you for your patience. We will be back on the air as soon as possible!

Please ignore this post. I have to do it in order to connect it with my Technorati account

Technorati Profile