I listen each week to a folk music program, The Midnight Special, on Chicago’s WFMT. The evening’s playlist used to go up on the show’s website the next day. Beginning a few months ago, playlists don’t go up until a week later, for some legal reason having to do with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I’m puzzled how merely listing the songs—with links to the musicians’ websites where possible—can raise a copyright issue.
Is it somehow because the show is now available as a podcast?
I think the problem is that they also stream each program on the web in a continuous loop for one week after the broadcast. One of the conditions for a compulsory non-interactive streaming license is that the listener not know in advance what song is going to play next – this is how Pandora, for example, works. The reasoning behind this is that if somebody wants to snag a specific song off the internet, they won’t know when it’s coming up.
Obviously this is not a perfect solution since anybody could just listen for three hours and note which songs were played and then record in the next three hours. But it meets the letter of the law.
They could, of course, get each individual song licensed for streaming rather than relying on the compulsory license, but they apparently don’t want to do this.
Thanks for making me remember Midnight Special! I used to listen to that show in my old town, and then they discontinued it even before I moved away. Loved, loved, loved it!
I see; thanks.
Who knew that Sonny Bono had been so bothered by me having my tape recorder set up next to my transistor radio back in 1970, waiting for the new Creedence Clearwater Revival song to come on?
It’s not really about their being afraid of someone taping a song.
It’s that there are two different licenses—one for Public performance and one for distributing a copy.
To simplify the explanation —
A non-interactive service, which doesn’t allow you to choose exactly what will be played, is treated kind of like a radio station.
An interactive service, which allows you to choose exactly what to play, is treated kind of like a record store.
This stuff has nothing to do with Sonny Bono.