Earthling

Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.

If you use myEarthLink Radio off of the previous version of my.earthlink.net, today you'll notice that application serves you a message from Pandora CEO Tim Westergren instead of the music you usually get. Along with hundreds of webcasters, Pandora is participating in the Internet Radio Day Of Silence, and is therefore going dark today to shine a light on the Copyright Royalty Board's recent drastic increase in online music licensing fees that is making it difficult for all online streaming music providers to do business. Ian Rogers provides some more context on Yahoo!'s Yodel Anecdotal blog and a timeline of events on the Yahoo! Music blog. SaveNetRadio suggests that if you want to do something to help the cause, you can call your congresspersons and ask them to co-sponsor the "Internet Radio Equality Act" that would fix the rate hike.

Update: I read via Rusty and TechCrunch that Last.FM is about the only major music streaming service not participating. Their side of the story is over here. They see the day of silence as "punishing the user" unnecessarily. I think if this is their position, they should be making some other significant gesture today supporting the cause, as any gains will be to their benefit and they're all in this together. I'd like to see a "we don't believe in punishing our users over this, but here's what we're doing instead..." that's something other than business as usual.