I rely on both Pandora and Yahoo! Music on a daily basis to listen to streaming music. Both sites offer their services for free and are excellent at what they do. Since I found them I have been liberated from the confines of my music library and from the need to constantly try to augment said library…so imagine my dismay when I loaded both sites today and found that they had gone silent.

Pandora and Yahoo!, along with many, many others have halted their services today in protest of a March 2 ruling by the congressionally-appointed Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) to raise the royalty rates that internet radio stations must pay to stream music. The ruling stipulates a rate increase of between 300 and 1200 percent over the next 5 years. According to the SaveNetRadio coalition, a group representing the stations, this raise will make it nearly impossible for smaller stations to stay in business.

To make matters even worse for the stations, this year’s smaller (but still substantial) royalty hike has been made retroactive to January 1, 2006, meaning that internet stations have suddenly found themselves at loose ends to pay 18 months worth of back royalty fees that they didn’t know they would have to pay. If the royalty hike is not overturned, every day might be a day of silence on the internet.

For more information on the issue read the clear-headed BBC article, and to join in the effort to save internet radio go to SaveNetRadio.org.

–Dan Steckenberg