Here's what you'll hear on a typical smooth jazz radio station: Toni Braxton, Vanessa Williams, Phil Collins, Kenny G., Gladys Knight and the Pips, 30 year old songs from Spyro Gyra and George Benson, a song or two from Peter, Rick, Norman or Boney and other format core artists but only the "singles," and nothing much from 2004 forward.

Here's what you'll hear on a typical smooth jazz internet station: The Rippingtons, Fourplay, Acoustic Alchemy, Michael Franks, Lee Ritenour, Craig Chaquico, Basia, Gerald Albright, Maysa Leak, Jeff Golub, Spyro Gyra and George Benson from this century, and lots of deep tracks from the format core artists, newcomers and independents.

Sure, the Lite Adult Contemporary approach has its purpose, and it has its fans.  But what if that became the only way you could hear any smooth jazz at all.  You would miss about 99% of what's out there, and with no way to be heard that 99% would dwindle to nothing at all.  The remaining record companies would have to cut their rosters even more, and most independent labels couldn't live on the revenues of the one or two tunes that cracked the airplay barrier.  Once you discover internet radio, it's hard to imagine listening to a short, repetitious group of songs interrupted by inane banter and long clusters of commercials.  After a few weeks it becomes as natural to log on as it was to turn on the radio, and like most internet activity you start to take it for granted.  Don't.  The majority of the non-corporate and non-profit streams could disappear within a few months.

In early March the Copyright Royalty Board announced the rates that internet broadcasters have to pay to license the music they play for 2006-2010.  Not only does the rate scale increase yearly, it is retroactive to cover 2006.  Where webcasters were previously required to pay a reasonable minimum fee or a percentage of their revenues, if they did generate revenue, now all webcasters will have to pay a "per performance" rate - a "performance" being any time one listener hears one song.  This is not to be confused with a "per song" rate either.  If 10 listeners hear one song that isn't one performance, it's 10.  Say you have a fairly cozy little internet station that has an average of 100 listeners at a given time, and you play about 12 songs per hour.  The rate you owe for 2006 is $0.0008 per performance.  That comes to about $0.08 per song per hour.  Keep multiplying. $0.96 an hour.  Small change?  Keep multiplying.  $23.04 a day.  $8,409.00 per year.  This rate increases yearly until it reaches $0.0019 in 2010.  If a small webcaster survived that long, they would owe over $50 per day.  Now think about a site like Accuradio.com or Radioio.com that has multiple channels.  They have to pay for each channel.  What happens to Pandora, where each listener essentially creates his/her own channel.  On our own turf, what happens to all the broadcasters on Live365, where  most of the smooth jazz channels are indie and non profit.  How about smoothjazz.com and their hundreds of thousands of listeners (cha-ching), or the jazztrax.com stream, which is where everyone goes to hear new releases first and songs from Art Goods' extensive music library (the meter ticks faster as each person tunes in and each song gets played).

Supporters of this rate structure say that web broadcasters should have to pay for the content that they are using to build their businesses.  True, if it is a business for them, and they are using this content to generate income.  But what about the web broadcasters who are in it solely because they want to share the music they love.  The internet is basically our living room now.  We chat, IM, and share everything from political commentary to home movies.  When we were in high school and college we would invite friends over to listen to music.  As adults there is so much going on in our lives that we barely have time to invite friends over at all.  So you put your favorite music on an internet station and invite them, and the rest of the world, to listen.  How else are we going to find new music that is tailored for us?  Corporate radio thinks we want to go to our graves still listening to "the songs you grew up with.”  They won't touch a new song or a breaking artist unless there is some nostalgia factor in the package. 

Another concept that came up and made me cringe was that culling out the majority of these internet stations would be a good thing, because it is better to have a small group of stations that have lots of listeners than a large group of stations that have smaller clusters of listeners.  Advocates of that theory say it would be more advantageous to the artists because they would be exposed to a higher concentration of listeners.  The fact is that fewer stations would mean less diversity - a smaller group of artists getting more exposure while others get shut out.  Since the surviving stations would be competing for advertising dollars just to fund their royalty payments, ratings would come into play.  When ratings come into play conservative playlists follow.  Diversity is internet radio's main draw.  You can hear any genre or fragment of a genre anytime you want to with just a search and a mouse click.  With sites like last.fm and Pandora you can even set up a station that will turn you on to songs and artists based on a set of preferences you program in.  The staff at your favorite record store used to do that, but how many of us have access to stores with deep stock or knowledgeable staffs.

There is no way that the majority of musicians will benefit from this structure.  Sure, a few major label pop stars that are getting extensive traditional radio airplay and play on the corporate streams will rake in a little bit more, but artists who are more adventurous, progressive, or playing styles of music that are not extremely mass appeal will just lose the strongest potential avenue of exposure they have.  A lot of them haven't been working it to their advantage; some are still sitting around waiting for traditional radio to "go progressive" again, while the real "underground radio" - internet radio - is a resource just waiting to be utilized.  For adults who want more than "the songs you grew up with" it's all there is.

When it comes to political activism, there is a tendency these days to think that there's not much a regular person can do.  Or that what little they can do won't be enough.  If everyone who listens to internet radio or gets "airplay" on internet radio did just one little thing, the cumulative impact could be what saves us all from the Lowest Common Denominator. 

- Shannon West