The Internet Radio Royalty Payment Blues by Willie ‘PR Machine’ Bottoms (as recorded on June 26 by TMT field reporter/Dr. Seuess character The Lorax on what should have been a really nice DAT but, after The Lorax spent his stipend on trinkets and po’ boys while visiting New Orleans, turned out to be a TalkBoy)

That Sound Exchange

Made an offer today

To try an’ make internet radio stations’ worries go away

But Save Net Radio still ain’t happy

No, no they ain’t happy at all

Just like

Both of them ain’t happy

And happiiiineeeeessssssssss

[The recorded portion of the tape slowly crawls to an unintelligible stop as our intrepid field reporter has once again failed to account for his TalkBoy’s brief but brilliant battery life with a fresh pack of Duracells... Garbled static cuts to the shortwave polka broadcasts previously recorded on the cassette.]

Notes: Play to the tune of Sweet Home Chicago, except substitute any reference to “California” with Sound Exchange’s proposed $2,500 cap on the minimum $500 per station/channel payments for any one online internet service, which, as part of the Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) ruling on the matter, is set to go into effect July 15. Swap any references to “Chicago” with Save Net Radio and DiMA’s polite decline of the “California” offer, describing the proposed offer’s discontinuance in 2008, two years before the CRB’s decision expires, as “a stay of execution for Internet radio.” And any meetings said to take place at “the crossroads” will most likely occur on Capitol Hill or some reasonably accommodating and mutually agreed upon hill that may or may not be a crossroads. Or perhaps even some metaphorical crossroads of internet tubes, organized in, of course, series.