Why live365?

[Plesk]

Just curious... Why live365 instead of just having a privately operated stream? Personally, I'm not a big fan of the way live365 has taken a turn towards becoming a pay service in recent years.

[Zephem]

Very simple.

In order to broadcast music on the internet, even if you run your own server, you have to pay royalties to bands per play of their song.

When you have as many shows as we do and the variety of music that's played, it becomes difficult to keep track of what tracks are played when and making sure the artist gets their money for it being played.

Live365 is a pay service because they pay for these licensing fees to many of the top record labels. Therefore, anything you stream through them is, for the most part, okay to play and for people to listen to.

Oh yah, it's per listener too. Per song and per listener.

Anyway, you don't do it legit like, go and make your own server, get the bandwith, and the RIAA find you, they'll want connection logs to your server.

They want to know who your listeners were, and they'll want to know what songs you played. Otherwise you're in big hot doo doo, and you'll lose your family and home because they're evil and love money not music.

I think Live365 is the lesser of any evils.

[Plesk]

I guess that makes sense..

[Tarryk]

Also the all-encompassing reason that derives from all of Zephem's explanations: Going with a private server that handles royalties costs about 7 times what we pay live365. And since we want to stay non-commercial (except for in-game commercials of course), affording that is out of the question.

I've been approached by a LOT of people in the past 3+ years always asking us to go private, and saying that the RIAA won't do anything because their "friend's been doing this for a long time and never got busted." Well, it's only a matter of time before internet radio takes the helm of the RIAA's evil glare, and GSP is both very high-profile and the oldest existing netcast for an MMORPG. Those two together would put us near the top of the hit-list, and we don't want to be caught with our pants down. Better safe than shut down.