The low-hanging fruit
 

How will government and corporations get control over the internet? They'll pick the easy stuff first. Right now, they're going after internet radio hard.

Bill Goldsmith explains the stuation here.

There has been much discussion about how unfair these rates are, but our listeners find one fact particularly apalling: while Internet stations like ours are being told they must pay royalty fees that exceed their income, sometimes by several times over, FM stations - including those owned by media conglomerates like Clear Channel - pay nothing at all!

Yes, both FM stations and Internet stations pay royalties to songwriters and/or music publishers. But the royalties in question are owed to the owners of performance copyrights, which means, in most cases, record companies - and to them, FM stations pay nothing at all.

How is it possible for such a massive disparity to exist? For the answer to that we need to go back to the 1990s, when music industry lobbyists persuaded Congress to include wording in two pieces of legislation (the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) that drew a sharp division between analog and digital broadcasts. Their reasoning was that a digital radio transmission was not a radio broadcast at all, but a sequence of perfect digital copies of music performances provided to the user, who could then copy them rather than paying to own a CD.

I'm game. How can I capture an Internet radio stream in digital format, rather than recording it via analogue conversion by programs that capture the soundcard output?

Streamripper.com but you're messing with my argument. :) Someone I know does it because of the insane security at her present job.

Your argument is messed anyway. On your side is logic, reason, fair play, and justice. On their side the RIAA. Sorry. :(

This is all about control. The royalties are just a nice side income. The goal is to drive out diversity and non-RIAA music.

digital music is becomming more and more mainstream though. In the future I don't think it's unreasonable to predict that we wont have traditional stereo systems in our homes anymore. Everything will be webased and we'll no longer buy CD's or video's. We'll become members of online music shops where we'll either rent or buy the right to download music and movies. Anyway, this is how some people live now. Sooner or later, it'll be mainstream and everyone will have no choice but to jump on board.

In some ways. I don't even own a traditional CD player. All my music is done on computer or digital audio player. However I still buy CDs¹. There is no enticing reason for me to buy from a place like iTunes. It's hardly cheaper, the DRM offends me, it's not lossless and nowhere near as portable. CDs are still a better value for those who like a full album. Not to mention the online market is fragmented so many ways. P2P or legit. Apple or Yahoo or X or Z. etc. Plus you have those who don't even use a computer. It will take cooperation and coordination. Those won't be coming anytime soon.

¹ Lest others think my priorities messed up a tip to The Cellar is coming when I have $ again

Is there a site where you can make a playlist of songs and play them from any computer?

wouldn't you just need to upload them to your webspace and then just play them from whatever location you can access the internet?

Found here.